


In One Piece

by prizewinningfruitcake



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alcohol, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mage Rights, Mages, Medical Trauma, PTSD, Romance, Sex, Smut, background merribela
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2019-06-17 23:40:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 50,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15472665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prizewinningfruitcake/pseuds/prizewinningfruitcake
Summary: In the wake of the Arishok duel that leaves Hawke severely injured, he and Fenris start unraveling the issues that have kept them apart - as the rest of Kirkwall is unraveling around them.Spans Act 3, with a couple tweaks to the canon timeline





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on Tumblr, babes](https://gothkimmyschmidt.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Also I made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sJtsKmsn5jKB1Bx0lvnVE) cause I was feeling it

Hawke lived through the night. 

After everything - the fighting, the chaos in the keep, all the blood and screaming, Fenris had sat slumped in a chair in Anders’ clinic and overheard the mage say to his assistant, “people with injuries like that don’t last this long typically. I’ll be more confident if he makes it until morning.” 

Everyone had already gone by then; Aveline left right after carrying him in, wary of drawing attention. Varric and Merrill went to help put the city back together. He had seen no sign of Isabela since the duel - likely drowning her guilt in gin several towns away by then. 

Anders entered with an armful of bottles and bundles of herbs, his eyes red, underlined with two dark crescents. He stopped short and Fenris thought he might say something provoking, but instead he only asked if Fenris planned on staying and seemed relieved when he said he was. 

“I need to sleep,” he said, measuring and laying out several vials with instructions on how to use them. “Come and get me if...if you need help.”

He’d never seen Hawke so still, almost like he wasn’t the same person who’d come knocking at his door that morning. Fenris hadn’t wanted to go; it was early and his head hurt. Hawke had joked about needing to put an ad out for someone who spoke Qunlat and he’d relented.

Suddenly unable to sit idle, Fenris found a rag and began to clean the blood from Hawke’s hands, his forearms, his face and beard. So much of it. He cringed remembering the coughing from earlier and how Anders said it was because his lung had been punctured. 

A book lay on the table next to him, but he couldn’t focus. No words written would ever be able to distract. They would always remind him. That's when he dug up a pen and started to write instead.

....

Morning finds them both still breathing, somehow. Fenris rests his head against the wall, dozing, his letter tucked into the unread book on the table.

Hawke stirs finally as the first light creeps across the floor, groaning and grimacing in pain. Fenris jumps up, grabs the vial as instructed, and hesitates, fingers hovering, twitching. He slips an unsteady hand behind Hawke’s head, a gesture he remembers from a different context with unnerving clarity. He lets the vial trickle down the throat, careful not to choke him. After a few moments it seems to deaden the pain, or at least put him back to sleep. Fenris sits back. The warmth and texture of familiar skin lingers on his palms.

People filter in and out during the day; Anders’ assistant introduces herself as Lynna, Varric brings a sack of sweet rolls and says he’s sent word to Carver. Bodahn pokes his head in nervously in the afternoon, asking for an account of the day before. He leaves for a bit and returns with supplies and a pot of soup. Anders makes everyone use the tunnel that leads to Hightown. He says it’s going to get more difficult to keep Hawke here with so many people looking for him. But he looks pleased in spite of himself when he says it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A message from chapter-23 me: When I first started this long fic, I thought I knew how to write. Turns out I did not! I'm gradually editing some of these first chapters for style and clarity, but also I'm still trying to finish, and you know - move on to other things eventually.
> 
> I honestly do think it gets better later on if that's worth anything.


	2. Chapter 2

That evening, Fenris makes an errand. With a comically large pack on his back, he winds his way to the city gate. The air is damp and heavy, cooling as the sun sets. There’s a slow, empty feeling in the dead of summer here, accentuated now by the broken windows and burned out storefronts. Evidence of looting, Fenris thinks, a decidedly Kirkwaller passtime.

A lone Qunari posts by the gate, waiting. Fenris removes the Arishok’s sword from his pack and offers it. The soldier nods and produces both Fenris’ sword and Hawke’s staff in return. He had offered them up as collateral yesterday, explaining to the Antaam that their leader’s weapon couldn’t be removed from Hawke’s chest on the spot without killing him. He was surprised his negotiation had been accepted; he’d been prepared to fight them off if necessary. 

They part in opposite directions, exchanging no words. 

He passes by his house but doesn’t go in, pulled back to Darktown. The room crackles with magic when he returns. Anders is bent over the cot, a hand on Hawke’s chest. Fenris backs out and waits by the door. 

“Sorry,” Anders says as he exits, “just using a bit of evil, perverted magic to stitch his insides back together. Don’t mind me.” 

The comment doesn’t goad him like it normally would. “Well done,” he says, “thank you.”

Anders laughs, “Ah, you’re no fun today.”

It feels good to be there, to be useful, keeping watch. He changes bandages and mixes potions, whatever Anders and Lynna ask him to do. They have other patients to attend to, he knows, and anyway he wants to keep his hands busy.

A second sleepless night is not unusual for Fenris. Tonight, he’s awakened by nightmares, jolting on his propped-up-elbow in his straight-backed chair. Some of them he’s back in Minrathous, some he’s in Kirkwall locked in a box buried beneath the burning city. Some he’s just in this room but alone, sitting next to an empty bed.

Hawke shifts and winces from the movement. He mumbles, inaudible - something "fuck," something, "shit."

Fenris starts, “Hawke?”

Hawke grunts. Fenris lights a candle and lightly touches his hand, his heart in his throat. “Can you hear me?”

“Agh, piss off,” Hawke reaches up, holds his forehead, “Fenris?”

“Yes,” Fenris heaves, stifling a laugh and a sob. 

“There you are.” 

“I’m here.” 

“I’m hurt pretty bad,” he looks up, dropping his arm at his side, “-think it went all the way through,”

“It did,” Fenris motions to the bandage around his chest, “It’s out now.”

“Is it?” Hawke strains to look down at his wound, “Feels still in.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Only if I move....I won, right?”

Fenris smiles, “You did. You were stupid, but you won.”

Hawke laughs and coughs and clutches his chest. Fenris again doses medicine for the pain. Hawke lays back, closing his eyes. Fenris reminds himself to exhale. 

“Come lie down with me.” His voice is weak, nearly a whisper. His breath rattles like a drain.

Shaking, Fenris weaves their fingers. “I don’t - I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Alright, fine.”

He’s asleep after that. He doesn’t ask again. Fenris withdraws his hand and heads back home to open a bottle of wine.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hawke,  
_

_I cannot put into words what you have done for me, what you mean to me. I cannot say what this past year has been, how I’ve missed you. Before I met you, I lived a life alone. You showed me I could hope for something more. I was a fool to leave. I was a ~~cowerd~~ coward (fuck). I thought it better for you to hate me and find someone whole, not someone like me. I know I am a coward to tell you this only now that you cannot hear me. I hope I may be forgiven. I hope to the Maker that I am not too late. I hope that your feelings have not changed since that day._

 _I don’t want to live without you, though I understand if I must. Know that you have meant the world to me. I am yours if you will have me._

_Always,_

__

__

_Fenris_

It’s a good letter. The words came easily; they had waited in his head for over a year, knocking around his skull while he tried to sleep. He was a long time writing it, a dictionary in his lap to check the spelling of every fourth word or so. Even then, he had to cross one out. He isn’t sure about some of the punctuation, but then again Hawke never seems sure about that either. 

He has not reread it since he folded it and put it between the pages of Tales of the Wilds, but he remembers it being rather passionate. Perhaps not the most tactful way to begin a conversation. Still, it seems a waste to leave it unread, all the effort that went into it. Perhaps a time will arise that feels appropriate. 

Hawke is nearly himself again. He is still weak and in pain much of the time and he wheezes a little, but he can sit propped upright now, talking and joking almost like normal. Relief still courses through Fenris’ veins every time he looks at him. He isn’t really needed anymore, but still he stays. If Hawke remembers their delirious predawn conversation from a few days before, he doesn’t mention it. Fenris was angry with himself for leaving then, but perhaps it was for the best. They have time now. 

It’s been a veritable procession of visitors the past- six days? Seven? They’ve passed by in a haze, sunup and sundown near indistinguishable. He doesn’t sleep so much as find gaps in time, open his eyes to find the sky a different color than before. 

“Hawke, you ass,” Aveline strides into the room already arguing, “I can’t believe you.” 

Hawke turns his head, cranes his neck to look at her. “It’s nice to see you too, Aveline. Feeling a bit better, thanks for asking.” 

Fenris barely looks up. This conversation plays the same way every time. 

“Oh now you’re concerned with your health. You seemed intent on dying not a week ago.” 

“So you all just expected me to die then?” Hawke huffs, glances around the room, “Such faithful friends.” 

“You just had to duel him. You couldn’t let us help you.” 

“It seemed the most...polite way to sort things,” he says. This causes Aveline to snort. 

“That’s what Fenris said, didn’t you Fenris?” 

He did not say it would be polite. The Qun has no regard for politeness. 

Fenris opens his mouth but Aveline snaps, “Noble - alleged noble intentions aside, you drew a good deal of attention to yourself. People have been asking a lot of questions about you, especially Meredith.” 

The mention of Meredith appears to dampen Hawke’s disposition for a moment, but he presses on. “What’s she going to do to me?” he asks, “Lock me up in the Circle and start fixing all the nobles’ problems herself?” 

“That’s a fair point. She could lock up Anders, though. Or Merrill.” 

“Then she’ll have me in her hair every day until she finds a way to lose them.” 

Fenris thinks the Circle may be a better place for a blood mage and an abomination, but he knows better than to start that discussion. 

“Andraste’s big toe, you’re impossible!” she swears. 

“I’m sorry, alright?” Hawke laughs, wheezes, “I’ll be more careful.” 

Hawke doesn’t remember the worst of it. He wasn’t present for it. Now he asks if they really thought he would die as if there was no possibility of such a thing happening. 

Aveline softens, “Thank you. I’m glad you’re alive.” She shakes her head, “You really worried me, Garrett. You worried everyone.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hawke hurts, nearly all of him. The slash he took across both his thighs itches and throbs; his hips and knees are puffy black masses of bruises. The hole in his chest hurts, of course, but it’s really his lung that kills, demanding extra effort to fill itself and straining painfully with every breath. It tires him, makes his head ache, he sleeps every few hours like an old man. It hurts to talk, and it hurts to be silent, and it hurts to think.

“You really thought I was going to die?” He clears his raw throat. 

“You’ve asked me three times now,” Fenris says. 

“You didn’t answer me yet.”

Anders sighs from his work table, parting his curtain of hair, “I’m assuming it’s because he doesn’t _have_ an answer, Hawke.”

“Do not speak for me, mage,” Fenris rumbles tepidly, a perfunctory response.

Anders ignores him, “Anyway, you were run through like a kebab - what do you want him to say?”

No. Yes. _Something._

“Is that a yes then?" Hawke continues.

Fenris makes a face, the one where his eyebrows gather together to form a little storm cloud, “I wasn’t making a bet; I didn’t think one way or another.”

“Would that there were betting,” Anders says, “Could have made a killing on you.”

Hawke owes Anders his life, now several times over. Not to mention his brother’s life. It’s an uncomfortable position. The population in the clinic as a whole is uncomfortable. Anders and Fenris aren’t usually in such close proximity. They prickle at each other like alley cats, and it’s straining his nerves. The others drop in every few days, and don’t stay long. Isabela is gone, which hurts like a kick in the nuts. None of them want to talk about any of it, which hurts like a rotten tooth.

“Fen,” he murmurs, once Anders has gone. Fenris looks up, eyes narrowed. He hasn’t called him that in a long time. Probably not since they used to sit at Hawke’s drawing room table every other night, books and papers and pens spread out in front of them.

“...Yes, Hawke?” 

“Would you read something?”

Fenris looks like he just swallowed a bug. What expression that is, Hawke has no idea. He hadn’t quite meant to alarm; they used to do this all the time.

“Just...since you have a book with you,” Hawke gestures to the slim volume that’s been lying next to him, “and you know, I nearly died and all.” 

Fenris shakes his head, “You sound like your mother,” he smirks, scooping up and opening the book.

 _Tales of the Wilds_ turns out to be an account of an Orlesian student who lived with Chasind tribes. Not entirely what they expected, but Fenris settles on a curious chapter about the Witches of the Wilds and Chasind magic. 

His reading has improved dramatically in the year since Hawke last heard him. He stumbles over some of the more technical terms, but needs hardly any help beyond that. He reaches a description of Flemeth, “a frightful ancient-looking woman who carries the stench of dark magic, and adorns herself with the bones of orphaned children,” and looks to Hawke.

“This is the witch you met?” he asks.

“I suppose so,” Hawke replies, “though I don’t remember her wearing any orphans’ bones.”

“Perhaps she didn’t care to impress you that day,” Fenris idly flips a few pages ahead, “though I wonder how they knew if the bones had parents.”

“I thought that as well,” Hawke chuckles and pauses, suddenly nervous. “You read well,” he says at length.

“Well enough,” Fenris moves a folded piece of paper from the front cover to mark his place. His hair has grown in the last few months, and he’s started wearing it tied back sort of like Varric’s. Hawke wants to tell him it looks nice, but he doesn’t.

“Let me ask you a question,” he says instead.

“Not this again.”

“It’s a yes or no, Fenris,” Hawke pleads.

“It is not,” he brandishes the book, “Shall I finish this chapter?”

Hawke nods and lies back again. Fenris reads a few more lines before stopping. He fidgets with the pages, seeming to consider something, before closing the book in his lap once more.

“I didn’t think you would die,” he says, “Not really.”

“Oh no?” Hawke’s limbs protest as he shifts to better face him, “That wasn’t the impression I got.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to your facing death. I could scold you for your recklessness, but to what end? Aveline does enough of that.” 

“So you’re not angry with me?”

“Of course not,” Fenris moves forward, “I’m _angry_ with Isabela.”

It’s the first time anyone has used her name since this all started. Hearing it hurts like pulling out a splinter. “Do you know where she’s gone?” Hawke asks quietly.

“Not yet, but once I find out, I’ll drag her back by her ear. She ought to at least thank you before she skulks off.” 

“I suppose it was stupid of me.”

“No, you had little choice,” Fenris holds his gaze, “It was...difficult...to watch, but you did well.” A moment goes by and he adds, “Not that you require my approval.”

Hawke smiles and leave it be. For now, lying here a bloody mess, it’s enough to hear his voice again.

They have time.


	5. Chapter 5

Hawke remembers his last few conscious moments now, the desperate burst of energy he’d mustered, standing face-to-sternum with the Arishok, blood filling up his mouth. The memory is murky, but he remembers that careening sensation, the feeling one gets when one has fucked up royally and irrevocably. 

He didn’t exactly see what happened next. His vision was already dim around the edges, and he’d reached so deeply into the Fade what was left of it clouded over with unearthly green smoke. Then came the roaring whispers he hears in his dreams sometimes, then nothing. 

To hear Anders and Fenris tell it, the Arishok had not yet moved to pull his sword out of Hawke when smoke began pouring from his nose, then his mouth and ears. In an instant, fire consumed his entire head and torso, leaving him to collapse a blackened husk. It must have looked pretty fantastic, Hawke thinks.

“Dare I ask why you didn’t simply do that in the first place?” Fenris pulls on one of his gauntlets with the spiked fingertips. He’s admitted they make his hands all but useless for purposes other than wielding a sword, but he likes to wear them when he goes out anyway.

“I didn’t know I could,” Hawke says, “Are you leaving?”

“Could be you had help,” Anders says, raising his eyebrows.

“For a time,” Fenris says to Hawke, glancing at Anders, “Help from whom, exactly?”

“Think you’ll come back tonight?” Hawke asks.

“Someone or other from the Fade,” Anders shrugs, “It’s not uncommon for them to take an interest.”

“That’s...not what happened,” Hawke looks from one to the other.

“Just because you consort with demons doesn’t mean everyone does,” Fenris says, strapping his sword to his back.

“They don’t always ask first,” Anders says.

“Why are you taking that? Who are you going to stab?” Hawke points to Fenris’ sword, abandoning his casual tone.

“ _You_ , if you keep pestering me,” Fenris says.

“You’re too late for that,” Hawke says.

“The streets have been chaotic. Coterie, I suspect, making the most while the Guard’s distracted,” Fenris explains, “I won’t be long.” He slips out the back through the tunnel. 

Hawke glares as the door clicks shut. “Why do you have to cause trouble?”

“People have been asking me that my whole life,” Anders smiles, winsome. 

Hawke doesn’t waver, “It’s that sort of thing that makes people afraid of us.”

“I’m only telling the truth,” Anders says, “I can’t help it if it upsets your...pointy bodyguard.”

“He’s-” Hawke stops short, “If anything had helped me, I’d know.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Spirits don’t always know you’re there, why would you always know they’re there?”

“I don’t like talking to you about the Fade. I always feel like...” he motions around the space where Anders sits, “Justice might weigh in at any moment.”

“He might. He _does_ ,” Anders cocks his head theatrically, “Justice? Is Hawke possessed?”

Hawke grabs a book from the floor and lobs it at Anders, who dodges it. “You’re not cute,” he says, “and saying that shit around Fenris just makes him more stubborn.” He settles back, holding his chest.

“As if there is a more stubborn version of Fenris. You must know he’s never going to change his mind. You-”

There’s a crash from the room over, shattering glass. Immediately, Lynna appears, her face in the crack of the door. “Serah, I need you in here.”

He watches uneasily as Anders rushes out. He’s paying for fruitlessly chucking the book now, his chest thrumming with pain.

Anders takes in anyone he thinks he can help, especially mages in danger of being made Tranquil - the ones who can’t control themselves. It’s an admirable sentiment, but nerve-wracking now that Hawke is stuck here defenseless. 

He can sit up without help, but the one time he tried to stand didn’t go well. He can use magic, but it drains him to do even simple spells.

And it’s _boring_. Maker’s breath. He tries not to wait for Fenris to return, but there is scarcely anything else to do. It’s not fair to expect him; he’s under no obligation to come back at all.

The noise has died down. No telling if that’s a good thing or not. It’s likely Evelina, Hawke thinks, the woman from Darktown with all the children. She’s at the clinic often, helping out for whatever coin Anders can toss her way. Lately, her magic is erratic. Her spells go wrong, strange unintentional occurrences when she tries to cast. Emotional disturbances can cause that - fear and stress and that. He hopes for all their sakes that’s all it is. 

He wants to sleep, but his body won’t let him; every breath is a knife in his ribs, his stomach churning. Anders was joking about possession, but he’s right that Hawke has no way of knowing what happened when he conjured that...whatever it was. Hawke picks up magic and uses it like a tool. He doesn’t _talk_ to it. He doesn’t consult spell books. It just comes to him when he wants it. It irritated Bethany to no end. “I study for an hour, and you just snap your fingers,” she’d groused. 

His breath hitches thinking of Bethany. Every so often he finds himself wanting to write her, like when he was in Denerim and she still in Lothering, to ask her opinion on something. Even after so long, it sends a shock through him to remember that he can’t. He wants her here now. He wants his mother. 

He wants Fenris, and has him for the time being. The memory of waking and finding him there is warm, like lying on a rooftop in the sun. He doesn’t remember what they said, but he remembers Fenris holding his hand and speaking softly. From that moment, though, it feels as if he’s only gotten further away. Anders could be right about that too - so many times now he’s thought something would change between them, and every time they return to the same cold place.

After what feels like hours, he manages to sleep fitfully for a while. When he wakes, it’s nearly dark, and he’s still alone. He wishes now he hadn’t thrown the only book in the room. He isn’t much of a reader, but Fenris had already started that chapter. 

There’s an air current he knows he can use if he concentrates. He finds it, moves it around until it’s strong enough to blow his hair back, then tries it on the book. The pages flutter, but it doesn’t budge. He forms a hand in his mind, then an arm, then reaches out and grips the book, but it isn’t strong enough to lift it. Hawke sighs heavily and idly blows the piece of paper Fenris used as a bookmark. 

It unfolds and lies flat on the floor. There’s writing on it; it’s a letter. Squinting, Hawke recognizes the handwriting, and that it’s addressed to him.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s rained, washing away the gritty film of ash that’s collected on every surface, the smell of smoke replaced once again with ocean, street food, and a hint of urine. Lowtown shakes itself off and carries on. 

The market’s crowded, people finishing their shopping before Templars come around for the curfew the Knight Commander ordered. Fenris pulls his hood lower as he passes. It’s good to see The Hanged Man, peeling paint and all, at the end of his path.

Varric isn’t at the bar. Merrill is at a table and notices Fenris at once, waving at him like a simpleton. He tries to ignore her, but she starts calling out to him.

He takes the seat across from her, “Could you try _not_ shouting my name in crowded bars?”

Startled, she glances around them, “Everyone here knows you, Fenris. They see you here all the time.”

He scans the room for any eyes on him. “I still don’t want them staring at me. And you _shouldn’t_ but-” he sighs, “I’m looking for Varric. What do you want?”

“How’s Hawke?”

He doesn’t ask why she asks him instead of Varric or Aveline. “He’s fine. You could see for yourself.”

“I know, I should visit,” she says, twisting her fingers, “The clinic just makes me anxious. I feel in the way no matter where I stand.”

The clinic makes Fenris anxious too. Anders makes him anxious, in the same ways as always, and in some he can’t quite discern. “I usually sit,” he says.

There’s no sign of Varric still. After a pause, Merrill says, “How are you, Fenris?”

“I’m going to get a drink,” he says. 

She smiles, “At least there’s that.” She’s always kind to him even when he’s not. He watches from the bar as she returns to her sketching, a foot resting on the chair across from her where Isabela used to sit.

Drink in hand, he knocks on Varric’s door. The dwarf shouts, “Who’s asking?” and opens up right away when Fenris answers. “I’ve got something for you,” he says, ushering him in.

Varric’s room is littered with stacks of books, the surface of his desk a tangle of loose papers. “How do you live in here?” Fenris says. 

“It’s tough without creepy noises and mountains of dust,” he retorts, rifling through a large envelope, “but I get by.”

“It’s not dusty now. Sebastian hired someone to clean.”

Varric snorts, “He would. Seen much of him over there?” He extracts a sheet of paper.

“No. I don’t expect he’d be caught in Darktown,” Fenris says.

“Fair point. Anyway, I finally heard from my contact in Tevinter. She got us a list of Ahriman’s female elven servants - now, it’s not a _short_ list, but before we try to narrow it down any more, I thought you could take a look. See if anyone looks familiar.”

Fenris’ throat tightens. He had nearly forgotten this errand. He drains the remainder of his mead and takes the letter from Varric. It really is long; that’s not a surprise. He begins to read, fighting the unrest in the pit of his stomach.

_Callista, Calpurnia, Camille..._

Varric leaves him be, busying himself behind another letter. 

_Vacinta, Varania, Winifred..._

“No,” Fenris sighs after his second pass, “I can’t remember.” He shifts from one foot to the other, still staring uselessly. 

“Damn,” Varric says, “Well, it was a long shot. I’ll see if she can have someone put a word out. We’ll want to be careful who we talk to, though. Is there anything you _do_ remember about your sister? Anything at all?”

“...I think she had red hair,” Fenris says after a long silence, “and I think she used to sew.”

“Well shit, elf, you’ve been holding out on me,” Varric snatches up a pen as if to note the two miniscule details Fenris has brought to him.

“I can’t be certain it’s true. It could lead us in the wrong direction.”

“The wrong direction is better than no direction, my broody friend.” He seems genuinely thrilled at this break, so Fenris decides not to protest any further. He can withstand a few more months of running in circles.

“So…” Fenris hands the letter back.

“I’ll ask what she can do with that,” Varric says, “It’s slow going, but we’ll see.”

“I appreciate it,” he says, pulling out his bag of coins.

“Agh, keep your money,” Varric waves him off.

“You’re doing me a service,” Fenris argues. 

“I’m doing you a _favor_. As a friend. Plus, how do you expect me to wreck you at Wicked Grace if you’re already broke? Come on.”

“Fine,” he tucks his coin back into his pack. “Have you found Isabela?”

“Oh yeah. I wondered what you came here for,” Varric says, “That’s an easy one. She was in Ostwick about a week ago, shaking down a mutual acquaintance. Now she’s on her way to Markham. She’d be stealthier if she didn’t piss everyone off the whole way.”

“That would be difficult for her.”

“Evidently she’s pretty low on coin, so I wouldn’t worry about her sailing away on you. You planning on tracking her down?”

“In time,” Fenris says, “I’d like to...discuss a few matters with her.”

“Well, go easy when you do. We all fuck up.”

Varric insists on buying him a drink, and one for Merrill too. They play through a terribly mismatched game of Wicked Grace - Merrill shows her hand on her face and sometimes literally from holding her cards too loosely - before Fenris notices the day is fading and takes his leave.

He stops in the now emptier market and buys two sandwiches, one with the bitter greens that Hawke likes, and one with extra sauce for himself. It bothers him, owing people, favors or otherwise, but he is thankful Varric turned down his coin, as these aren’t cheap. 

Hawke used to take him here when they first knew each other and get himself one. Fenris insisted he was satisfied with a bowl of porridge, but never turned down a bite or two - or his own whenever Hawke happened to buy another and put it in his hands.

Those were days before he could truly afford it, Fenris realizes now. He’d seemed rich by Fenris’ standards at the time; he had a house, a family, more than one set of clothes, a _dog_. It seemed an incomprehensible extravagance to keep a dog in one’s house for no purpose except to lick one’s face and sleep on one’s feet. 

Fenris, for the first time in his life, lived in a house, but it was less of a home and more of a place to sleep. It still is, though he sleeps more comfortably these days. He’s certainly better fed now. He used to only think of food when his life depended on it.

Hawke likes food. He missed being near the market when he moved into the estate. Pricey as they are for Lowtown, the sandwich is nonetheless considered peasant fare. 

He winds around the back avenues between Lowtown and Hightown, lest he’s picked up any tails. The few times he’s left the clinic he’s taken a different route back. This time, he approaches Hawke’s house and, fishing the key from his pack, lets himself in through the servant door. Hawke’s neighbors once complained about the manner of people who passed through his front door. They’ve mostly given up now, but Fenris still prefers the side entrance.

Orana is in the washroom, and peeks out at the door creaking open. “I’m just passing through to Darktown,” Fenris says.

She nods and returns to her washing. He hears her softly singing to herself as he climbs the stairs into the main house.

Hawke’s dog Annabelle growls as he enters, but on seeing him capers about begging for attention. He kneels down and pats her head, stroking her soft ears, letting her lick his forearm. Her hair is going gray, but she doesn’t act like an old dog.

“Master Fenris! By the Stone, you took me by surprise,” Fenris starts as Bodahn rounds the corner. 

“I’m...just passing through to Darktown,” Fenris says again, his face beginning to heat. He hadn’t meant to linger long enough for Bodahn to notice him.

“Of course,” he bows, “You’re always welcome, Serah, and through the front door as well, if you like.”

“I uh…” 

“Oh!” Bodahn snaps his fingers, “If you don’t mind, Serah, would you bring Master Hawke his correspondence? I’ve been meaning to do it myself, but since you’re on your way -”

“I…yes,” he stutters, Annabelle still nudging his hand with her nose, “yes, that’s fine.”

“Good! On the desk in there,” he points to Hawke’s study, “you remember, I’m sure.”

He does. A significant pile has grown on Hawke’s desk, letters and packages, some from names Fenris hasn’t heard in quite some time. Likely trying to ascertain whether Hawke is alive and if he isn’t, how soon they can descend on his fortune. Hawke considers correspondence a chore, but he may be grateful now that he can’t do much else. 

It occurs to Fenris that he has his own letter to give. Perhaps if he stuck it in with the rest, he could avoid watching Hawke read it. Still, there’d be no avoiding watching him _respond_ to it. The thought causes Fenris’ insides to clench up; he can’t imagine any turn of events that doesn’t make him nauseous. He sweeps the lot into his pack.

Ghosting past Bodahn, he locks the door behind him and heads down the tunnel to Darktown. It’s dark, but he knows the way well enough to not need a torch. 

The clinic is quiet, though there’s broken glass on the floor, swept into a corner and apparently forgotten. He exchanges a questioning glance with Lynna, who notices and grabs a broom. As much as he doesn’t prefer to be here, something in him loosens when he enters, a tight coil unwinding. He continues to the little storage closet that’s become Hawke’s room.

He pushes the door open and finds Hawke sitting up on his cot holding the letter. _His_ letter. Folded. Either unopened, or opened and closed and folded. Fenris freezes.

For a moment, he seems not to notice that Fenris is there. He sits staring at his lap. When he turns to look, it's agonizingly slow. 

"I... found this." He taps the paper’s edge against his thigh, runs a hand through his hair. He's _nervous_. 

Blood rushing to his head, Fenris holds the door frame for support. He thinks he manages to nod acknowledgement. 

"I haven't read it." 

Fenris holds his breath. 

He waited. 

"Should I... ?" A tentative glance, eyes dark and searching. 

How long has he been sitting here waiting? 

"Go on," Fenris croaks. The force of speaking nearly buckles his knees. 

Hawke unfolds it, unsteady. His hands are shaking. Fenris' lungs burn. He wants to turn around while he reads it. He wants to turn, but he doesn't. Instead, he watches the top of his head, the nest of black hair now traced with thick silver lines - until it bobs and he looks down, at his face. 

He has a hand over his mouth. He says, "When did you write this?" 

"The first night you were here." 

He'd sat at Anders' desk after he'd gone to bed. Sat there numb and waiting. Hoping. 

Hawke pauses for a very long time, staring. Perhaps reading it over again - and perhaps again and again. When he looks up his eyes are shining, brimming. 

"It's very good. You've been practicing." 

Fenris isn't certain if the rush of hot breath that comes from him is a laugh or a sob. Could be both. 

"I have. Thank you." 

Hawke laughs too, sobs too. “Come here.” He moves over and pats the space next to him.

Fenris sets down his pack, fumbles with his weapons, slings his belt over a chair before easing onto the cot with one foot still on the ground - he isn’t sure how much weight it can hold. Not knowing what to say next, he produces the sandwich he bought earlier and hands it over. “This is for you."

Hawke looks at him puzzled before unwrapping it and dissolving, melting, bent elbow over his face, hand still grasping the letter. Fenris barely hears him say, "You’re trying to kill me.”

They have a great deal to discuss. He has so much to tell him. But right now, he needs to be kissing him. Steadily, far more than he feels, he takes the letter, the sandwich, from his hands, sets them aside. Hawke looks up. He's warm, radiating warmth. His lips are soft and wet and open under his and Fenris keeps him close with a hand on the back of his neck. He lets his foot up off the ground, curling underneath him. They can both fit here. 

When he pulls away, Hawke says, “I only ever wanted you. I only wanted you.”

“I’m sorry,” Fenris says.

“I’m in love with you,” Hawke says, “Thank you for the sandwich.”

They have much to talk about, but right now he is so incredibly tired. Fenris settles into the crook of his arm, catching his breath. At length, he says, “I don’t know what comes next.”

“Me either. We’ll make something up.”

It isn't comfortable lying two to a cot in a closet. They fall asleep that way anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

He can’t believe Fenris remembered. It’s only been a few years, but it feels like forever now since Hawke first coaxed him into the market. He was a bit different then - quieter, more formal. And thinner. Hawke always bought drinks for anyone he took along for a job, but Fenris he’d feed as well, concerned he wouldn’t do it himself. He’d shove a sandwich into his hands, and they’d sit out by the docks and eat them. 

Hawke and Isabela brought him to the Hanged Man for cards, and he’d sat with his hand on his dagger the whole time, but kept coming back. One night as they watched him leave, Hawke said, “How long?” and Isabela sucked her teeth and said, “Ten years?”

Isabela said once that two people at sea together long enough would inevitably fuck, and Hawke started quizzing her on that assertion at once. “Alright,” he said, “so me and the Knight Commander are on a ship - how long until we fuck?” Isabela nearly cried laughing and said four years. It became a frequent source of conversation; he needed only to look at someone and say, “how long?” for her to take his meaning. Seneschal Bran would be three weeks; Queen Anora, six months; Anders, thirty minutes. 

“Ten _years_?” Hawke repeated, incredulous, “I’m not asking him to marry me.” 

“Prove me wrong,” Isabela said.

….

This morning, the second in a row, Fenris sleeps lying next to him instead of in the wooden chair by the bed. He faces away from Hawke, an arm under his head and dangling over the edge. 

Hawke stifles a groan on waking, a habit now, bracing himself on his elbows. His knees are less bruised; he can bend them nearly all the way. He pulls himself upright and raises his palms over his head, meeting the pain that swells and splinters in his trunk. Lately, he’s been pushing himself, testing his range of motion. He stops when the pain crowds the breath from his chest and he can’t move without either crying or passing out. That, or when someone else becomes concerned and makes him lie back down.

Fenris stirs and rolls over. “You’ll tear your stitches,” he swats at Hawke’s arm, face half-buried in a pillow. 

“I was trying not to wake you,” Hawke says.

“Then you shouldn’t snore so loudly.” He sits up and extends the arm he had been sleeping on, stretching. 

Hawke reaches out and tucks a strand of silvery hair behind his ear, indulging in the novelty of having him so close. “I do still have a hole in my lung,” he says.

Fenris regards his wounded side, grazing fingertips over his breast. “Is it painful?”

His right lung feels like it’s full of stinging insects. “Not much,” he says.

Fenris returns to his chair as Anders and Varric file in. Varric points out the growing stack of mail on the table and soon they’re littering the floor with envelopes. Hawke’s received a volume of letters, mostly well-wishes, thanks, and invoices (the one from Worthy is addressed to “Garrett Hawke or Next of Kin”). One is a request, or rather a politely-worded demand, for an audience with Knight Commander Meredith. 

“I hope this message finds you well, or at a minimum in one piece…” Fenris begins for the fourth time, raising his voice over the chatter as Aveline enters.

“I assume that means, ‘I hope you’re dead, but if you’re not,’” Anders says.

“...In the wake of recent events,” he continues, “I believe it falls to me to express the gratitude of the city. Your actions, though controversial, nonetheless saved countless lives. At your earliest convenience, my officers and myself would bestow a distinctive honor upon you, and offer a guiding hand in partnership. In disorderly times such as these-”

“‘Disorderly,’” Aveline echoes, stone-faced.

“If only there were some institution devoted to keeping order, eh?” Hawke says.

“-we are strongest when united. By the Light of the Maker, Knight Commander Meredith Stannard,” Fenris finishes, flipping the page over as if to check for something written on the back.

“Why does it sound like she’s trying to name you Viscount?” Varric says.

“She isn’t,” Aveline crosses her arms, armor clanking as she leans against the wall. “She’s come up with some bullshit title for you so that she can feel justified ordering you around.”

“‘Guiding hand in partnership’ does sound a little ominous,” Varric says.

“Is it so preposterous she could be sincere?” Fenris says, “Having her as an ally would be advantageous, would it not?”

“Well, she couldn’t exactly write, ‘I know you’re a mage. Report to the Gallows at once,’” Anders says.

“You think it’s a setup?” Hawke questions, perhaps too eagerly. This is the first interaction with the outside world he’s had since he’s been here. 

Anders shrugs, “I think she sees an opportunity to seize more control over the city than she already has.”

“For once we agree,” Aveline says, “though, I don’t see her trying to put you in the Circle. You’re more valuable to her outside of it.”

“I can’t imagine my being a mage is news to her,” Hawke says.

“Master of subtlety,” Varric chuckles. Aveline sighs. 

“Will you meet with her then?” Fenris asks. 

“Suppose I don’t have much choice,” Hawke says. “Unless we convince her I’m dead or something. Can we convince her I’m dead?”

“Trust me, no one would believe you’re dead without a body,” Varric says. “Theorizing about what’s become of you is kind of a favorite pastime around town.”

“There are theories about me? Anything good?” 

“I heard a crazy one the other day,” Varric leans forward in his chair, “that you were pressed into service by the Chantry and sent deep undercover to infiltrate a Qunari base-”

“I don’t have all day,” Aveline interrupts. “Whatever her intentions, she can’t find you here.”

“Agreed,” Anders says.

...

Hawke is glad to be booted from the clinic. He’s been dreaming of his house - his dog, his bed, his liquor cabinet. He thinks the last time he went this long without a drink was during the Blight. After everyone leaves, he turns to Fenris and says, “Ready to get out of here?” Fenris nods emphatically. 

It’s too soon for him to be moving this far; walking has proven fairly difficult for him. Aveline offers to help get him there, but Fenris says they can manage. Anders spends several hours muttering and scraping and mixing and produces a vial of something that glows like sunlight through ice. He hands it to Hawke and says, “Take that and send for me if you need me. And please don’t ever get hurt like that again.”

He understands the warning once he’s swallowed the potion; it’s mostly lyrium, heavily concentrated. It hums in his blood, diminishing his pain to a ghost of its former self. Nobles go to great trouble and expense to get potions like this. It must have eaten up Anders’ entire supply.

“I’m good for it, don’t worry,” he assures Anders. Although he knows the answer, he asks, “I don’t suppose you could make more of this?”

Anders shakes his head, “You don’t want to get started on that. It would probably kill you before your money ran out.” He looks toward his supply shelf and says, “I _would_ appreciate a contribution. Some glassware too if you wouldn’t mind.” Hawke was right about Evelina. She’d tried to rearrange a cabinet and somehow caused all the bottles and vials inside to shatter.

He had forgotten what it felt like to breathe easily, without steeling himself. Once his lung heals, he swears he won’t take it for granted.

The journey back to Hightown moves slowly, his legs weak and wobbly from disuse. A little over half way, they refuse to move any further and he leans panting and light-headed against the wall, spilling onto the floor of the tunnel. As matter-of-factly as he might refill a lantern that’s gone out, Fenris pulls him upright, plants a knee between his thighs and leverages his arm to hoist him onto his back. Hawke gasps, struggling to gather his bearings.

“If I’d known you could haul me around, I would have had you doing it before,” he rasps, halting between ragged breaths. 

“What makes you think I would have obliged?” Fenris asks.

He laughs, or maybe just coughs, too tired to banter. If it weren’t for Anders’ concoction, he’d be in agony. As it is, he rather enjoys this, his body draped over Fenris’ shoulders. Heat gathers in his torso, a stirring between his legs and he’s relieved to know his cock still functions.

It’s late by the time Fenris sets him on his feet in the doorway; no one responds except Annabelle, who dashes back and forth, nails clicking on the wood floor. They regroup, both exhausted now, and hobble up the steps to collapse on Hawke’s bed. 

Hawke draws Fenris against him as they settle, thoughtless, soft around the edges, and they search each other out. A hand on his neck, lips brushing, Hawke murmurs his name into his mouth. He caresses the exposed forearm where his sleeve ends, curls of rough, raised skin where his markings are. Fenris sighs and kisses him hard, a tightened grip on the back of his neck. 

A deep breath to steady himself and Hawke surges forward, pushing him back to roll onto him, planting his knees, lowering his hips gently. Fenris says something, mumbled. “-hurt yourself,” he thinks he hears. 

“I don’t care,” he says. He buries himself in the space between Fenris’ ear and his shoulder, devours the curve of his neck. The ache is taking root again, and he holds on, clinging wild.

“Stop.” Fenris grunts and squirms, a flash of vivid blue, hands pushing his shoulders back and Hawke shifts to let him sit up. 

“It’s alright, Fen, you’re not-” but something is wrong. He’s sitting at the edge of the bed now, his face in his hands. “Fenris, what’s-” Hawke reaches out to touch his hand and he recoils. 

Fenris shakes his head without answering. He’s trembling, panting like he’s had the daylight scared out of him. 

Hawke’s chest is on fire as he pulls himself to sit beside him; he probably didn’t help his injuries moving around so much. “Did I hurt you?” he manages after a moment. He knows the markings are sensitive, but he thought he was being mindful of them. 

“No.” He holds a hand over his collar, swallowing hard. His breath still comes in shallow gasps. Hawke yearns to put a hand on his back, to pull him close and tuck his head under his chin, but he knows better. He can see him struggling to speak, his face contorting with the strain of words that won’t come.

“It’s alright-” Hawke attempts, choked, as Fenris gets to his feet and hurries from the room. He tries to pursue, but his legs buckle beneath him when he puts his weight on them. He swears and slumps back onto the bed, staring at his wooden ceiling and thinking of two people creaking past each other on a ship every day for ten years, looking but never touching.


	8. Chapter 8

The worst of it has passed, and now Fenris crouches on the stone entryway like a gargoyle, listening to the bullfrogs jabber in the distance. A patrol guard shuffles past every few minutes - Aveline must have this place heavily monitored. They don’t notice him poised above them.

The dread that gripped him is gone, replaced with a poison calm that weighs down his limbs. He could fall asleep if he wanted, but he knows the strange dreams that would follow would only wake him again. It used to descend on him nearly every night when he first arrived in Kirkwall, a curse that clung to him, never letting him rest. It has him still now, freezing his blood, shaking his limbs, and he’s helpless against it. He’s _weak_. It lit him up just now like he was being attacked. Possession without demons - it’s only him, or something seeded so deep beneath his flesh that it may as well be him. He slams a fist into the column beside him, savoring the impact. 

There’s nowhere to go but back inside. Leaving can only delay the inevitable, and anyway he doesn’t trust himself to take on Templars or Coterie in this state. Hawke might be angry with him, but it hardly matters. Hawke didn’t understand what he’d gotten himself into. Perhaps he is beginning to understand now. 

Hawke is dozing, sprawled on the bed with his feet hanging over the edge, the candle they’d lit before still flickering. A few dark spots dot his shirt - he must have torn his stitches like Fenris said. Shouldn’t have lain down with him like that. 

He jerks awake and groans, bracing an elbow beneath him to look up. “There you a-” he heaves, overtaken by a fit of coughing and wheezing. He lets himself fall back onto the bed, holding his chest. 

Fenris attends to him, occupying the space beside him to apply pressure on his wounds. He grabs a bottle from his bag, the mixture that helps soothe the coughing. Hawke doses himself, Fenris opens his shirt and presses a rag against the bleeding. 

Once Hawke is able to speak, he says, “You had me worried.”

“You thought I wouldn’t come back,” Fenris says.

“Wasn’t that so much,” he props himself up again, “but you looked terrified. Are you alright?”

“No,” Fenris says, “I hardly know more than you.” 

“This the first time something like that’s happened?”

“...No.”

Hawke nods and coughs more and regards him, perhaps waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, he says, “Is this what happened...the last time?”

The last time. Standing in that entryway, bruised and weary, arms crossed against the cold. _You don’t have to be alone_. He stayed, hands on his face, his arms, underneath his shirt, and it hurt but he didn’t care - Hawke drunkenly pressing a finger to his lips, _we’ll wake my mother_ , opening the door to his bedroom. It was no good. He didn’t know what was expected of him, and what he did know, he couldn’t do. _Don’t be sorry, we’ll try again_. He’d woken with Death and Ruin on his heels, convinced utterly of impending disaster. So he left. 

Fenris nods, checking his compress and reapplying it. “Yes, I suppose so,” he says.

He can feel Hawke looking at him even as he avoids his gaze. He says, “You don’t have to talk about it tonight if you don’t want. We could-”

“I don’t know _how_.” He cringes as his voice breaks, straining his sore throat. He meets Hawke’s eyes expecting to see frustration, but there’s only confusion and concern. Almost as bad. 

He raises a hand near Fenris’ face, like one would towards a cat. Fenris starts to move away, but he’s drawn in, closing the distance to let knuckles stroke his cheek. They’re rough and warm, a comforting curve on his skin.

“You’re sure I didn’t hurt you?” Hawke says.

“It’s not that,” Fenris says. He doesn’t think the stitches are bleeding anymore, but he keeps his hand there. “The markings cause me pain, but it’s nothing I don’t endure every day. I can bear it.”

“Ideally I think what we were doing is meant to be enjoyed, not endured.” 

“I want to,” Fenris says miserably. “I’m trying.”

“I know,” Hawke says. “It’s not your fault.”

“I _know_ that,” Fenris bristles, a burst of frustration. “It hardly matters when I’m forced to live with this torment. You could take it up with Danarius if he bothered to show his face.” He deflates, reaches into his bag for a bandage. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, unraveling and placing it on Hawke’s chest, “I’m ranting.”

“You know I like your ranting.” Hawke says. “Was it all bad? It seemed like you liked it at first.”

“Yes, at first,” he says, “but it starts to be…” He shifts, restless, searching for words.

“Too much?” Hawke finishes. 

“I start to feel like...something terrible is going to happen.”

“You’re probably not wrong about that,” Hawke laughs. Fenris frowns. “Sorry, bad joke.” 

“I can’t explain it.” He pulls himself to sit upright, toes nearly touching Hawke’s hand.

“You don’t have to all at once,” Hawke says. “We can figure it out as we go.”

“What if I-” he hugs his knees, “can’t?” 

“Hmm,” Hawke puts a finger to his chin. “I could dress up someone from the Rose like you? Put Jethann in a wig? He’s about your size - ow!” he falls back as Fenris jabs a foot into his sore ribs. 

“Can you never be serious?” 

Hawke smiles even as he sputters and coughs. “I’m not... worried...about that,” he finally gets out.

“You said you were.” 

“I was worried for you; I’m not for me.” He indicates his torso and says, “At the moment, I can’t even kiss you without coming apart at the seams.”

“You’ll heal,” Fenris says.

“So will you.”

Hawke has a way of speaking that makes people believe him. It doesn’t hurt that he’s usually right. Fenris stretches out next to him, lays a hand on his bruised side. “I shouldn’t have kicked you, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure I deserved it,” Hawke says. He glances down to Fenris’ hand on him and says, “Does that hurt you?”

“No,” Fenris says, “not really.”

“It’s nice. You should do it more often.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

The candle finally burns out, or possibly Hawke put it out. Fenris curls and lays his head against Hawke’s arm. 

“I love you, Fenris,” he says, as he’s said many times before. As he says to Varric and Merrill and the barmaids at the Hanged Man. He’s rather southern that way, loose with his affections. Generous, perhaps, is how some would put it. For once, Fenris thinks he knows what he means by it.

For once, he says it back.


	9. Chapter 9

Hawke wakes in a panic, a deep sobbing gasp like a man drowning. It startled Fenris the first time, but he’s used to it now. He marks his book and returns to bed as Hawke rolls onto his back and shields his face from the light. 

“Sorry,” he says, squinting out from under his arm. He turns away and coughs, his other morning routine, breath crunching in his chest. 

Bad dreams. Fenris has them too, but he doesn’t imagine Hawke would like to discuss it. He runs fingers through his hair, something he does like. Hawke hums approval, and Fenris caresses the curve of his ear, moving down into the forest along his jaw. His hair is matted down with dirt, his beard dense and unruly. 

“You need a bath,” Fenris says as he combs tangles with his fingers. 

It’s an offhand comment; he doesn’t know why he chose this moment to say it, but Hawke looks at him brighter than he has in at least a week.

“I must really smell huh,” he says.

He does, but Fenris doesn’t mind. Hawke’s musk agrees with him. He says, “Your hair’s a mess. And you’ll have a visitor soon.”

“Let’s not bring _her_ into this,” Hawke swats away the mention of Meredith, “but I do like the sound of that.”

Fenris starts to fetch the necessary supplies and wipe the tub, but Orana notices, a gentle knock and she looks in on them. She won’t hear of it. “I’ve not enough work to occupy me as it is,” she says, and tosses a rag at him. He retreats.

“Fenris, don’t harass my housekeeper,” Hawke says, moving to sit up at the edge of the bed. 

“You’re no better,” she shakes her head as she fiddles with the spout on the wall. They’ve little need to haul water when Hawke can move it with magic, and for when he’s not there he’s built pipes with valves into the reservoir on the roof. It’s rather impressive, Fenris thinks, though Hawke’s mechanical structures aren’t always so functional. 

“Well pardon me for not being more demanding,” he teases. “Perhaps we’ll start raising livestock in the courtyard; would that make you happy?”

She slings her rag over her shoulder and steps back as the water rises. “Can we keep nugs?”

“Where did you hear of nugs?” Fenris asks, bewildered.

“Sandal showed me a picture in a book,” she says. “They’re so sweet looking.”

“That sounds more like keeping pets,” Hawke says, “but I’m sure we can track some down. Find me the materials and I’ll build a pen for them.”

“Really?” she smiles.

“I don’t see why not. Once I’m upright again, we’ll get you proper nug farming.”

“Of course. Thank you, Serah.” She gives a little bow, and bounces on the balls of her feet watching the tub fill before stopping the flow. “I’ll get started on breakfast.”

“Don’t hurry, we’ll be a while,” he says to the closing door. 

We. Fenris supposes this is what he proposed after all. It isn’t as if Hawke expects him to leave while he bathes. He didn’t think this through.

“Great,” Hawke says, “now we’re keeping nugs.”

“You didn’t have to agree to it,” Fenris says.

“ _You_ try saying no to her.” He stands, testing his balance before hobbling to the tub. “Worse than Merrill.”

He smiles, a tendril of affection tugging his chest as he watches Hawke dip a hand in, circling in the water until it begins to steam. Leandra would never have been so permissive with the servants; Hawke lets them run the house. “She looks happy,” he says.

“She seems to be getting on,” Hawke says. “I worry sometimes; I’m hardly ever at home. I mean -” he looks back at Fenris, “even before all of this.”

He’s referring to the past year and a half, a period of time which Fenris realizes with discomfort can be measured to the day by Orana’s presence. Before that, he’d been here all the time. They’d been here. 

“Anyway,” Hawke says before Fenris can reply, “that’ll keep Sandal busy too. He tends to cause trouble when he’s not occupied.”

He winces as he reaches back to pull his shirt over his head. His smallclothes follow, tossed into a heap by the bed. 

Fenris has seen him undressed on more than one occasion (three now to be precise), but never fully in daylight. His body is a map of injuries - yellowed bruises blotching his hips and sides and knees, scars cutting webs across his arms and thighs. The wound on his chest, unbandaged, glares raw from amid a tuft of black hair. It’s ugly but it’s healing. And underneath, his shape is the same - the barrel chest, the dimples in his lower back. 

“Alright,” Hawke circles the edge of the tub, considering his movements. He grips the sides and steps over. Fenris keeps an eye on him as he lowers himself incrementally, ready to spring up if he needs help. He sighs, satisfied as he finally makes contact with the seat, and says “Shit, I made it.”

He made it. 

He’s home and whole and himself again, after everything. Fenris prayed for this. From those first moments when he’d lain bleeding on the floor of the keep, he’d prayed harder than he ever had that it wasn’t the end, that someday he’d see the scar that wound became. He didn’t expect to see it in this setting, but he’s here and suddenly his heart is overflowing.

“What are you thinking about?” Hawke tilts his head. That’s what he asks when he feels Fenris has been quiet too long.

“Do you mind if I...come in?” he says. He flushes immediately, but doesn’t turn away.

A hint of surprise crosses his face. “I was hoping you’d ask, actually,” he says.

With clumsy, half numb fingers, he loosens the collar of his shirt. Hawke bends and splashes water over his head, an unspoken moment of privacy as he undresses the rest of the way and crosses the room. The water is hotter than expected, causing a hiss as he climbs in, rising perilously close to the edge but not quite spilling over.

“I made it pretty hot,” Hawke says, by way of apology. 

Fenris shakes his head. “It’s good.”

“You were right,” he says, looking through his fingers as he rinses his hair. “I needed this. I’m starting to feel halfway living.”

They’re close, their legs nearly touching. He wants to reach out to him, to put his arms around his battered body and hold on, but he’s snagged there. Weighed down. He says, “You look a bit less wild,” which isn’t a particularly romantic thing to say. His mind is slippery, words at the edge of his tongue tumble back down his throat and vanish. 

“I don’t imagine I’m much to look at,” Hawke mumbles, “at the moment anyway.” 

“You’re all I want to look at,” Fenris says. Hawke smiles, wide and genuine, and it’s enough to gain a foothold. 

Hawke says, “You only want to look?”

His fingers twitch, moving to take one of the hands across from him. His nerves are on fire. “No,” he says, “but…” 

“You can touch if you want. Anywhere. I won’t touch you unless you ask me to.” 

Fenris raises Hawke’s hand to his lips, brushing calloused knuckles. “Wouldn’t that be…” he laces their fingers idly, searching for words, “frustrating?”

Hawke shrugs. “Could be fun.”

Letting go of his hand, Fenris lunges forward to kiss him. Hawke gives a little surprised “mmhff,” as their mouths connect, as hands cup both sides of his face.

Fenris is half-standing over him, a knee resting on the stone seat beside Hawke’s leg. Aware of his cock jutting eager between them, he holds his hips apart, leaning in. His hands slip down his neck, over the ridge of his collar, to where the water meets his chest. He tears himself away to say, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” He looks up, assuring. His hands lay still at his sides, and it should be strange but it isn’t. An invitation. 

_Anywhere_. And there’s so much of him, and he wants to be everywhere at once. He draws a gasp from him, hands on his sides, on his hips and thighs. Hawke leans back, lips parted. “Oh Fenris,” he sighs ragged, “touch me.”

Closer, he lowers his other knee and Hawke squirms, an arm thrown over his head. Fenris stops. “Are you-”

“I’m fine,” Hawke says. “This is harder than I thought.”

The corner of his mouth curls involuntarily. “Is it?”

“Fenris.” Hawke mock scolds, fingertips held to his chest. “Are you making dirty jokes?”

He answers by diving into him, limbs wrapping around him, an anchor. He seeks out his mouth again, his tongue, lowering his hips to find his cock. It’s crude, grinding into him like this, but Hawke moans openly and arches his back, and Fenris thinks he’d do nearly anything for that. He pauses to breathe, biting the inside of his lip, holding back.

They work against each other, soft sighs and lapping water. Not enough friction. Fenris holds him, a hand on the back of his neck, and Hawke looks at him breathless and dazed.

“Don’t stop,” he says. His hand comes to grip his cock and Fenris touches his own, stroking, squeezing. Mouth on his throat, he gropes for Hawke’s free hand, moves it to his waist. He presses firm, guiding.

There’s a note of desperation in his voice and they move faster, locked in. Hawke pants, choked, hips jerking wild as he comes, and it’s too much. Fenris finishes himself, face buried in his warmth. 

For a time, he’s not certain he’ll ever move again. They mold together, languid, limbs draped over each other. Hawke nuzzles him, lifts his chin to kiss him. 

“No bad premonitions?” he says against Fenris’ skin, lips trailing along his jaw.

“No,” Fenris says, and just then there’s a rap on the door.

“Master Hawke,” Bodahn says from the other side, “begging your pardon, but you have a visitor.”

They exchange a wary glance, and Hawke calls back, “Is it Meredith by any chance?”

“Yessir. Shall I tell her you’re indisposed?”

Hawke throws his head back and groans. “No, tell her I’ll be out presently.” To Fenris, he says, “I suppose you already saw that one coming.”

Fenris helps him out of the tub, and he flops onto the bed. He looks up again and says, “You don’t have to stay for this. I wouldn’t.”

Pulling on his leggings, Fenris says, “I wouldn’t leave you alone with her for anything.” 

Orana hovers as they leave the room, a scrubbing brush in her hand. “Leave it,” Hawke says. “I’ll take care of it.”

She opens her mouth to protest, and Hawke says, “I mean it. If you touch that bathwater, you’ll never see a nug in your life. Don’t argue, it’s for your own good.”

Fenris suppresses a chuckle, and follows him down the hall.


	10. Chapter 10

Meredith is a beautiful living statue, perfect golden curls carved into her head. She sits rigid in one of the high-backed chairs in the drawing room where Bodahn put her, Cullen standing just behind her. Hawke is sure he was offered a seat, so he must have refused. She is holding something folded on her lap, and she is speaking. “For bravery far beyond the call of citizenship…”

_Is it fate or chance? I can never decide._

“...honor to serve your city, and...”

_You’re all I want to look at._

Fenris sits at the table near the door. Too far away. Every now and then their eyes meet and he quickly looks away, careful not to draw attention, but Hawke doesn’t care. He’s in love and he’s loved back, and this has never happened before. Not to him, not like this.

He dreamed of a sinking ship this morning, of blackness and panic, water rising around his ankles. He’d been running, throwing open doors, looking everywhere for Fenris. He knew everyone else was lost, and all he wanted was to see him one last time before they were swallowed. 

And then he’d woken to find him in his bed. He doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of that. 

“...embodying the fearsome spirit of Kirkwall, and its proud heritage, on behalf of the Chantry of Thedas, I hereby name you the Champion of Kirkwall, and present you with this crest.” She unfurls a tapestry, woven from thick red and gold thread, bearing that skeletal dragon. She passes it to Cullen, who leans over the furniture to hand it over.

“Thank you,” Hawke says. He’s scarcely met Meredith before now, officially anyway. He’s seen her from a distance, discussed her with Aveline and Anders, somber with head shaking and finger pointing. He and Isabela cycled through imagined descriptions of her underthings and nicknames for Cullen, eventually settling on “drapery” for both. He works to stifle a smirk at the recollection. Fenris catches his gaze and mouths, “don’t,” but he’s smiling too. 

She’s been talking for a long time. He’s probably expected to say something beyond “thank you,” so he says, “Kirkwall’s been good to me - in a lot of ways anyway. I was happy to take a sword through the lung for it. However, my healer tells me I only have one other lung, so I do hope it doesn’t happen again.”

“That is understandable,” she inclines her head, “though I fear we face threats more pernicious than swords.” She pauses, removing an envelope from her pouch and handing it to him.

Inside is a list of names and locations. Most he doesn’t recognize, but one is _Evalina - Darktown_. Further down, _Anders - Unknown_.

“What is this?” he says, letting his hand drop into his lap.

She leans back, crossing an armored leg. “The city is rife with dark magic. You, I think, are more attuned to that fact than most. The truth be told, in light of the resources necessary to keep the Circle under control, I lack the means to track apostates, and have for several years now. Someone of your skill and connections should have no trouble.” Some of her words come out overpronounced, consonants sharpened against teeth. Conne-CTions. ATT-yuned. 

He folds the paper, a little smaller than it was folded originally, and stuffs it back into the envelope. Leaning forward to hand it back, he says, “I don’t work for you.”

Meredith accepts it and lays it on the table between them. Her face is uncannily poreless and very close to his. “Neither do you work for Guard Captain Vallen,” she says, “yet she seems to depend on your services.”

Sitting back, he says, “Aveline is a friend. We came from Ferelden together. You spend weeks in the hold of a ship with someone, you might do them a favor sometime.” His blood heats, but he forces a shrug and a smile. “‘Depend’ probably isn’t the right word.”

“Nevertheless, you must recognize the urgency,” she rapidly taps the envelope on the table. “For you to stand by with blood mages, abominations in your midst - that raises questions.”

Hawke takes a breath, but Fenris speaks first. “He’s aided you on more than one occasion,” he says. “There is nothing to question.”

Hawke has killed a good many mages since he came to Kirkwall, mostly because they forced him to. A few he’s sent to the Circle, a bitter argument with Anders every time, but it was the only way to keep them safe. Or so he thought - now when he sees them at the Gallows, he wonders.

No one acknowledges Fenris’ interjection. “I help where I can,” Hawke says, measured. “I help where and how I see fit. I don’t follow lists. I don’t do anyone’s bidding.”

“That may be,” Meredith gathers herself, plants feet on the floor, “but I will be investigating the claims I’ve received about the guard captain.”

“That sounds like a threat,” Hawke says.

“Think what you will, but-”

Fenris says, “Perhaps if you took your nose out of the guard’s business, you’d find the time to track apostates yourself.”

That sets it off. The air in the room has gotten heavy, and now it ignites - voices rise and climb over each other. 

“Serah Hawke, I will thank you to control your servant-” Meredith snaps.

“-is the sort of improper display I’ve come to expect-” Cullen is saying.

“I am no one’s servant, you pathetic-” Fenris snarls, rising from his seat. 

“HEY,” Hawke booms, snatching attention back to himself. “I’ve got an idea. You two,” he traces a circle around Meredith and Cullen, “leave my house.” When no one moves for a moment, he says, “Unless you’re going to arrest me, _The Champion of Kirkwall_. You’re welcome to.” 

Fenris’s brow is furrowed. He doesn’t approve of this bluff.

Meredith looms over him while he sits, daring her to drag him out. “That won’t be necessary today, though this has been,” she turns and looks at Fenris, “an enlightening conversation.”

She points at the envelope still on the table as they file out, and says, “Consider cooperating, Serah Hawke. It is the most painless option for both of us.”

Fenris mutters something in Tevene as Bodahn’s voice echoes in the hall and the door closes. Hawke slouches, drained, an empty worried pit. His throat is raw, a cough approaching, but he beats it back.

“I don’t like her,” Fenris says.

“I like you,” Hawke says, letting his legs splay in front of him. 

Half a snort, and Fenris settles in the newly vacant chair opposite him. “I fear I made matters worse,” he says.

“You did. I’m very proud.” 

Fenris scoffs and shakes his head. “I am not sure it was wise to invite her to arrest you.”

Hawke grunts acknowledgement and stretches out further towards him. Fenris rests a foot on his shin. A glance at the envelope on the table is a question, and Hawke answers with a nod. 

“Anders is on it,” Hawke says, watching his eyes trace downward.

“I’m only surprised they don’t know where he is.” Fenris checks it over once more and sets it down.

“Assuming it’s truthful,” Hawke says. It had to be all manipulation, the ceremony and title too. The Champion of Embarrassing the Chantry, more like. “Though Anders knows how to lie low.”

Fenris doesn’t comment on Anders or the Circle. They owe him, both of them. “Suppose we should warn Aveline,” he says.

Aveline. Who carried him half dead over her shoulder not two months ago. Who took his hand one night during a storm over the Waking Sea when he was sure they would sink and drown. She’s the champion, if anyone is, and as it is she could lose everything only for associating with him.

“You know, I was having quite a pleasant morning,” Hawke says. He slips further in his chair, knees buckling under the table, shoulders folded and scrunched.

“So was I.” Fenris cringes amusement, untangling their legs. “What are you doing?”

Hawke slides, chin to his chest, scuttles until his ass hits the carpet. “I don’t know.” He turns to let his head lay back, a perpendicular shift to solid ground. “I like it here.”

Moving the table aside, Fenris joins him, gives his thigh a squeeze. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything assuring to say. Except that whatever comes, I’ll be beside you.”

Hawke tugs his sleeve, seeking him, drawing him downward, and he aches as their foreheads touch. “I wasn’t kidding,” he says, fingers firm against his cheek. “You were brilliant.”

“I would have expected it from you.” Fenris says.

“Exactly, I’m brilliant too.”

Hawke reaches up to kiss him, but stops short, admiring his smile. He’s seen so little of it, but there’s promise, there’s more and more. Fenris closes the gap, pushing his head back, flattening them, and Hawke opens his mouth against his. His body protests the weight, but he ignores it.

A moment molded together before Fenris breaks away. “We shouldn’t do this in- What is that?”

“What?” Hawke follows his gaze underneath the chair where Meredith sat.

“The chair is...burned.” Fenris rolls off and sits up, shoves it back. In the carpet, smouldering, hot to the touch, four scorched black holes where the legs were.


	11. Chapter 11

“What do you make of it?”

Anders doesn’t answer for a moment. On his knees, he lifts up the front end of the chair to examine the scorch marks. 

“It’s definitely burned,” he says, and Hawke suppresses an eye roll. “The pattern is strange, almost definitely magic.” He traces a finger over one of the holes in the carpet and stands, smoothing the knees of his trousers. 

“You can’t think of any explanation?” Hawke takes a seat on the lounge, tired already from helping him carry his supplies inside. 

Anders shrugs. “Well, you’re not going to like it, but it seems to’ve been caused by magic, and there was only one mage in the room, right?”

“Yes, but I-”

“You didn’t do it,” Anders finishes. “Not intentionally.” 

Hawke sighs and crosses his arms, considering his next words carefully. It’s difficult discussing magic with Anders, and not only because they tend to disagree. 

“I’m not trying to agitate you. It’s not unexpected that you’d have some-” Anders gestures, searching, “-interference. You’ve been through an ordeal.”

“Suppose that’s not a bad way to put it,” Hawke concedes. “In the moment, there was some tension,” he adds, a gentle take on the scene that unfolded in that room the day before. 

Anders gives a soft laugh and sits on the other side of the lounge. “I can’t imagine why.”

Hawke handed him Meredith’s list the first thing when he walked in the door. If his name on it concerns him, he hasn’t said so. 

“It wasn’t actually my fault for once,” Hawke says. “Fenris suggested she get out of Aveline’s business, and it boiled over from there.”

“That’s surprising.” Anders says, then looks around. “Speaking of which…”

“He’s not here,” Hawke answers. Fenris received a note earlier in the morning and excused himself to make an errand. Hawke is reasonably sure of where he’s gone, but he didn’t pry. 

Anders looks expectant, waiting for him to elaborate. “Do you need help here?” he asks finally.

“No,” Hawke says quickly, then, “He’s only gone out for the afternoon.”

Anders doesn’t say anything more. Hawke says, “It’s not safe for you to be here right now. I’ll do what I can, but you should lie low for a while.”

It’s gnawing at him. He’s a danger to his friends, even when he’s barely moved for weeks on end. He doesn’t want Anders to leave, doesn’t want to be alone. He’s divided in half, worried either way. Anyway, there’s only so much conversation he can hold before his body punishes him. He clears his throat, a different gnawing.

“I can’t lie much lower, Hawke,” Anders says. “It's getting worse. It has been for a long time, whether or not you've wanted to acknowledge it. But I’m not going to leave you here on your own.”

“I’m not on my own-” he’s cut short, breath catching in his throat. He hunches as a coughing fit finally rips through him, dreadful repetition.

“I know, I know,” Anders puts a hand on his back, a wash of magic, and for the moment he can breathe again. “But he’s not much of a healer, is he? Sort of the opposite.”

Hawke thinks of Fenris’ low curses while he untangles bandages, knitted brow while he stares at the scrawled labels on Anders’ mixtures. He smiles behind his clenched fist as his convulsing subsides, answer enough.

“How have you been feeling? You seem more mobile than last I saw you.”

“I feel a bit less like I fell off a rooftop. And if you’re wondering, I _have_ fallen off a rooftop.”

“Of course you have,” Anders lays his hand back in his lap. “How’s your breathing?”

“I _can_ breathe. That’s always nice.”

“Hawke,” Anders fixes on him, stern. “Be honest with me. I can’t help you otherwise. Are you in pain?”

“Almost always,” Hawke says, and feels a little lighter for having said it. He wasn’t keeping it a secret, exactly, but he prefers not to think of it if he can help it.

Anders nods and reaches out again towards his chest. “May I?”

He lifts his shirt, a ritual cemented from weeks in the clinic. Anders’ hand presses into the wound on his chest, itching and stinging but unbandaged now, and stares unfocused into the distance.

“What are you doing in there anyway?” Hawke asks.

“Feeling around. It’s hard to explain.” He presses his other hand to the corresponding wound on his back. “You’ve been careful with it, right? No strenuous activities? No one climbing on top of you?”

There’s a bite in his voice that Hawke ignores. “I’ve been good,” he says, and it’s true. Fenris is careful with him to an almost amusing degree. “I can breathe, but it hurts,” he adds. “And I’m always tired.”

“Well, it’s healing, slowly.” There’s a burst of energy between Anders’ hands, something he doesn’t understand. Healing magic is a mystery to him. “I healed you very quickly at first because you were dying, but it’s better to leave it alone. You’ll just have to be patient.”

Dying. He says it so casually, but it’s strange to hear it, to imagine what must have happened beyond where his memory stops. 

“Aside from pain and exhaustion, anything else you’ve noticed?” Anders asks.

He’s afraid. He has been before, trapped in the Deep Roads, for instance, but not like this. Never in his own home, a vague sense of dread, moments of unjustified stabbing panic. Helplessness, like floating in the middle of the ocean, waiting to be dragged into the cold and the dark.

But that’s not Anders’ concern. “Not really,” he says. “Apart from…” he nods toward the burn marks on the floor, “that.”

Anders sighs. “Right. I might not be the best person to advise you on that. Have you had any trouble using your magic otherwise?”

“I haven’t had much reason to try it.” 

Garrett came into his magic when he was seven years old, the same age his father did. That always made him proud, despite his mother crying when she found out. He was special, gifted with power and strength. Entrusted, his father told him, because magic is as much a danger as it is a blessing. 

Now he’s afraid of that too, afraid of losing control, of being too weak to fight. Afraid. 

_Is it fate or chance? I can never decide._

_The Champion of Kirkwall_

“Garrett?” Anders lets go of him, tugs his shirt back down. “Your heart’s racing.”

“I’m fine,” he says, a hand through his hair as he leans back again. 

Anders doesn’t press him. He steals a few glances, idly chattering while he restocks the draughts and poultices, and lingers by the door until Hawke assures him it’s alright for him to go. 

“If you need anything, I’m not far.”

“You’re a good friend,” Hawke says, and that hardly covers it. 

He shuts the door to the drawing room, not wanting to look at it anymore, and moves down the hall. The bedding is rumpled from this morning, instructions to Orana to leave it alone because he wanted to get back in it as soon as he could.

“Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide-” A fragment he remembers from childhood. He’s never put much stock in any of that, but he’ll take what he can get.

The sheets smell like Fenris, much more comforting than the Chant. He breathes it, covers pulled over his head, and curls against the pain lapping at his edges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo it took me forever to get back to this, but I swear the next chapter won't be nearly as late. Thanks for reading, ya weirdos.


	12. Chapter 12

He doesn’t like to leave him, had to tear himself away this morning when he got the note.

_Elf,_

_Looks like you don’t have to go far. She’s back in town - bar by the docks. I bet you can catch her if you leave now._

_You didn’t hear this from me._

_V._

He doesn’t like the docks, the empty compound. He sees it happen again, hears it, as if once weren’t enough. Hawke moves to parry but not fast enough, and he’s caught, _squish_. Gasps, screams, it’s finished, then it isn’t, and it was the only way. The only fair way, the only honorable way. There was nothing he could have done. It wasn’t him who put them there.

“Isabela.”

She has her back to him, hair twisted into a rough braid. 

She turns her head. “Don’t look so smug. I knew you’d turn up sooner or later.”

“Then why force me to hunt you down?”

She turns on her stool, facing him fully. She’s thinner than last he saw her. She looks tired. “I just like being difficult, I guess. I don’t know. Can you blame me for not being eager to hear whatever it is you’ve got for me?”

For all the times Fenris has said he had matters to discuss with Isabela, now that she’s directly in front of him nothing comes to mind. He takes a seat next to her, lest people stare.

“You look different,” she says. 

Fenris shakes his head. “It’s been scarcely a month.”

“Search me. You want a drink?” 

He does, and he pays for both of them. He’s never been in this tavern before; he’s reasonably certain most don’t come here more than once, a transient place. It’s hardly more than a shed, light poking in through holes and cracks in the wooden walls.

“He’s alive, if you wanted to know,” Fenris says. He’s recovered from his lapse in focus, remembering some of what he wanted to say.

“I know.” A melancholy sort of smile into her glass. “I figured he must be or you would have paid me a visit sooner. I’d be missing some of my insides, I think.”

He hasn’t given it much thought, the alternative. Not since that night. Though he must admit, sitting against the wall of the clinic, listening to Anders curse in desperation in the next room, watching Merrill wipe up blood from the floor, he did harbor a few violent thoughts.

“Is he… alright?” she asks, and Fenris doesn’t know how to answer. 

“He will be,” he shrugs, forgoing the list of injuries, “I assume.”

“Look, Fenris, I know. I’m a shitty person, alright? That’s just- If you’d wrung my neck or plucked out my liver or whatever, I would have deserved it. But I did all I could, I mean, short of time travel.” She drains the remaining half of her ale, sets her mug down gently, and turns back to him. “I came to apologize. I’m sorry. I’m shitty. I’m sorry you all thought I was something I wasn’t.”

Fenris feels a stitch growing in his forehead. “Don’t look at me like that,” Isabela says.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m full of shit.”

She’s always trying to read his mind. Usually she’s not far off. 

“You came to apologize. Am I required to accept it?”

She sighs, her shoulders slumping. “No, but I’d like it if you at least believed me.”

Her apology is cheap, self-serving. He could say so, could say a great deal. “Merrill’s missed you,” he says.

That surprises her. A silence before she says, “Been talking to Merrill, have you?”

“No. But it’s plain enough.”

She picks up her mug, finds it empty, and sets it back down. “She’s better off without me.”

Looking up to catch the barkeep’s eye, Fenris says, “Do you plan on telling her that yourself?”

“I was hoping I’d just make you angry enough to kill me before I had to.”

He chuckles, then swallows it as the barkeep looks his way. He motions for another round and sets to finishing his drink.

“ _That’s_ what it is,” she squints and points at him. “That’s what’s different. You look happy.”

He is, absurdly, in spite of it all. His chest erupted with warmth when Hawke kissed him goodbye earlier, and it hasn’t gone away.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You liar,” she laughs. “You should have seen the smile on your face just now.”

“I don’t always frown.”

“No. You smile at your own jokes and when you’re around Hawke.” She leans an elbow against the bar, facing him now.

He looks away. “I never knew you examined my expressions so.”

“Did something happen then? Have you two been rubbing bits?”

Fenris cringes. “Don’t be crude.”

He won’t get away without answering. Silence will be taken as confirmation, and he finds he isn’t interested in lying to her. Bela cocks her head and he inclines his, a nearly imperceptible movement.

She’s fully grinning now. “Maker, _that_ was a long time coming.” 

This conversation has gotten away from Fenris. He did not intend to discuss Hawke with her in this way. 

“It’s-”

“Yes, complicated, I know.”

Of course she knows. Fenris has told her a little; he suspects Hawke has told her more. 

“Bela-” He hasn’t finished what he came for. “He nearly died. And you left. You ran from it.”

He watches her face fall as she takes in the words. Irritating, how it stings him as well.

“I know.” She stares at her knotted fingers. “I know. I just couldn’t- I needed to be gone. I don’t think I could have taken it.”

“ _You_ couldn’t have?”

He forced himself to stop thinking that night, to sit and wait, but the flood of images would have followed him anywhere. If they’d run out of time, the least he could do was to be there. So he’d stayed, cold and empty and, for the most part, alone.

“I guess I- It was different for you, wasn’t it? If he had- Would you really have wanted to look at me after that?” She looks up to meet his eye. “That should have been me.”

“I can’t say,” Fenris says truthfully. He’s been over it in his mind, how it could have gone differently. “It fell to him. Were it me in his place, I would have done no different.”

Isabela’s face pinches into something he can’t quite identify. “Oh?”

“I know what the Qunari do to their prisoners.”

“Oh.”

He could have intervened. When Hawke began to slow, stumble, legs trembling, he could have ended it. He wanted to. It would have meant chaos, endangered hundreds, but there was a choice to make, risk and losses assessed. He wonders if he chose wrong.

Whatever expression Isabela was wearing hardens. “You’re all so _noble_ ,” she grumbles, shoulders seizing together, closing in on herself.

“Don’t start,” he snaps.

“What?” 

“Don’t you pity yourself to me.” His voice carries through the little wooden room. Thankfully, the few other occupants seem more than disinterested. 

She scoffs, “Why not? Seems like it’s all worked out for you. I’ve lost all my friends.”

“What are you talking about? Why did you come back, then?”

“To _apologize_!” She bangs her open palm on the bar. Her tone is sharp enough to draw a few stares, but she is focused on him, eyes glistening. “I left a lot of things unfinished. I know you don’t want to see me, but I thought you probably wanted to yell at me.”

“I did but…” The sour mood that passed over him is quickly dissipating. He’s tired of arguing already. “I’m buying you drinks, aren’t I? It’s good to see you.”

“You too.”

An easy silence falls over them, something he would have taken for granted not long ago.

“Varric told me to go easy on you,” he says at length.

“Well now you’ll have to tell him you snatched out my heart so I can see the look on his face.”

Fenris laughs and looks towards the door.

“Are you leaving?” she asks.

He wants to, wants to go home. To Hawke, he means. “How did you manage to find an even worse tavern than The Hanged Man?”

“I have a talent.”

“So it would seem,” he says. “You ought to come see Hawke.”

She nods, wipes at the smudged kohl under her eyes. “I’d like to. Is he upset with me?”

“He won’t be.” If Fenris wasn’t able to stay upset, Hawke will certainly crumble the moment he lays eyes on her. “We have alcohol there as well,” he adds. “Better alcohol.”

“‘We,’ huh?” she teases. 

It’s too much to explain what led him here, all that’s happened. Too much for now anyway. 

“Yes,” he says, “I am getting used to that.”


	13. Chapter 13

Hawke has figured out how to touch Fenris, or rather how not to. He mucked it up that night nearly two years ago, drunk from relief at finding him on his doorstep; drunk also in the more traditional sense, having gone out to drown his sorrows after that long strange day. 

Inside, they argued, they _discussed_. Hawke caught his wrist as he turned to leave and they crashed into each other, years of waiting, of wanting wearing against their bodies finally broke through. Hawke’s head swam, weak knees and he overtook him, pushed them against the wall to hold them both upright, pulled them towards his bedroom.

He was hurting him. He’s ashamed to think of it now, how little regard he had. Naked in his bed, he said to him, “Maker, you’re so beautiful. You’re so beautiful it hurts.” He wishes he hadn’t, words echoing in his ears; how tactless, how crude.

Hawke doesn’t touch him now. He drinks still, numbs his jagged edges, nerves placated, and Fenris drinks too, the way they always have. They lay naked in his bed, side by side, and he looks but he doesn’t touch. He hangs back, doesn’t force it, doesn’t reach out and take like a spoiled child. 

The markings wind and curl, crease into his skin when he moves, and in such tender spots - his throat, his inner thighs, the palms of his hands, the soles of his feet. Hawke lingers over them, hands idle on his own flesh, tries to imagine what it must have felt like.

Fenris looks too. He touches tentatively, slashed pink scars, darker round burns patched into dark hair. “And you insist on leaving your arms bare,” he chides.

“Well, a lot of these are from my brother,” Hawke says, “and most of the burns are from me.” Pyromancy isn’t the safest or most stable school of magic; controlling fire does not make one’s skin resistant, nor one’s companions and surroundings. Even masters must be watchful. Hawke doesn’t go into that. He props himself on his elbow and shows Fenris the scar on his palm from where Carver stabbed him with a fork once.

Fenris smirks and examines his fingers, lacing them with his own briefly before moving to the barely closed wound on his breast. He bends to look at it closer, to look over the rest of him. His expression changes, softer, inquisitive, and though he’s never been modest, Hawke finds himself flushing at the scrutiny. He wants to say something foolish, to break the silence, but he holds his tongue. 

“Can you feel the lyrium?” He glances back up at him. “In the markings?”

“Right now?” Hawke asks and Fenris shrugs. “Not unless I’m trying to. It’s a little stronger when they light up, but I don’t feel it any more than, say, the vials in my pack.”

“Tell me," trailed fingers over his stomach, his hip, "What does it feel like?”

“Sort of like a - a hum, I guess. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s warm when you drink it. It… buzzes.” He leaves off, unable to articulate exactly what he wants to, aware of the sensitive nature of the question.

“It hurts you, doesn’t it?” Hawke asks. “When they light up?” 

He’s seen it, the way he braces, clenches his jaw. Fenris swallows and nods. “I am accustomed to it.”

“And it hurts when I touch you.”

There’s no answer, but Fenris’ hand is on his jaw, that soft curious look in his eyes again and their lips meet. Hawke sighs into him, heat in his belly at the sudden contact. They separate, barely, breath on his lips and Fenris says, “I want to touch you.”

Hawke shivers and nods, hoarse when he says, “I told you, do whatever you want with me.”

Fenris pushes him flat, lies flush next to him, easing in. Hawke lets his hand come to rest lightly on his back as their foreheads touch, as Fenris hovers over him.

This is unfamiliar. Hawke’s never wooed someone like this before. And not for lack of wooing. He once considered himself fairly accomplished at that particular art. But nothing with Fenris is as he expected. 

Fenris kisses him hard, impassioned, catching his lower lip between his teeth. His hand stays there on his shoulder where he pushed him down, keeping him in place, but his lips wander to his throat, his neck. Hawke groans, tilts his head back to give him further access. 

A thigh brushes against his, Fenris’ length pressing against him just for a moment before he lifts his hips. He half-rolls onto him, a knee between his legs, fingers grazing down his side, lips teasing against his ear and then moving downward. Hawke sprawls languid, legs parted to give him room, arms loose and heavy around him.

Fenris withdraws and Hawke nearly whimpers. He opens his eyes to find him shifted fully onto his knees looking down at him. Something tugs at him, an impulse, muscle memory that urges him to reach up, to pull them together. He stays where he is, lets Fenris choose how and where.

The markings don’t quite feel like the rest of his skin; they are raised, a slightly different texture. He’s noticed it before, but he hasn’t felt it like this, hands roaming freely over his body. He arches his back, murmurs encouragement. 

“Fuck, that feels so good.”

Fenris smiles satisfied, hands exploring the curves of his waist, his hips. “That was my intention.”

Hawke sighs, heaves. His cock throbs, pulsing, weeping, and he can’t keep from touching it any longer. Fenris makes a low throaty sound as he takes himself into his hand, sits back and watches with interest.

The shyness is back, that flushed feeling he gets under Fenris’ gaze. It’s been so long since anyone’s looked at him this way, with heat and hunger in their eyes, and it isn’t only that. A good many people have seen him naked - a whirl of men and women, some whose faces he can recall better than others - but he is different now, worn and broken. Fenris is as magnificent as he’s always been, all sinew and sharp angles. And he’s a mess of gnarled flesh, soft where he wasn’t before, muscle fading from disuse.

Fenris’ hands are on his thighs, then his mouth, suddenly, as he dives down between them. Hawke gasps and moans as he kisses, nips, runs his tongue over the sensitive skin there. He lingers close enough for Hawke to feel his breath on his cock, but he hesitates and looks up, a question on his face.

Somewhat breathless, Hawke manages, “You can. You don’t have to. If you’re not-”

Fenris pushes his hand away, presses a kiss against the base, and it’s all Hawke can do not to buck into him. He moves upward slowly, steadying with his hand, lapping at the head before wrapping lips around him.

“Oh, Fenris,” he moans, hands clenched in the sheets. He says it again, responding as he takes more in, longer, breathier this time. “Ohh _Fenris_.” 

He lets his hips move gently, setting a rhythm, murmuring an occasional direction, a reminder or two to mind his teeth. 

But it’s very slow. Fenris stops and looks up again, wiping his jaw with the back of his hand. 

“Is it…?”

“It’s good,” Hawke says, “but I have a hard time coming like that.” He props himself up, adds, “With anyone.”

Fenris’ expression darkens. “You didn’t need to specify.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If I recall correctly, it makes you rather unhappy when you think you’re not good at something.”

Nearly every week for those first few months of study, Fenris professed his utter inability to form or recognize letters, oftentimes slamming doors and brutalizing furniture in the process. Hawke would give him a day or so to cool off, then turn back up with books and paper, daring him to turn him away. He never did. 

“I imagine most could say that,” Fenris retorts, but there’s a smile in it.

Hawke pats the space next to him and Fenris accepts the invitation, pulling himself to lie beside him. He coaxes him in, a hand under his jaw, and kisses him. 

They mold into each other again, Fenris rolling on top of him, hips flush and they rut together. Hawke strokes the curve of his back, waiting for any sign of discomfort. Finding none, he wraps his legs around him.

Neither stops moving, holding tight, rising heat, Fenris’ cock now against the cleft of his ass. He growls, gripping Hawke’s shoulder tighter, grinding into him.

“Fen,” Hawke says against his lips. Between increasingly sloppy kisses, he says, “Do you want to fuck me?”

"Yes," he says back immediately. 

Hawke shifts and fumbles in the bedside drawer for a bottle he hopes is still there. Finding it, he returns to his former position. 

Fenris doesn't. Something's gone cold, dark, behind his eyes. 

"What's wrong?" 

"I..." He shifts to sit up. He isn't looking at him. 

"It's alright," Hawke says. 

He doesn't answer. 

"We won't do anything you don't want to do." 

Fenris sighs heavy. "I _do_ want to." 

"But not tonight?" 

The look on his face is so forlorn it nearly makes Hawke laugh. He's never seen someone make a face like that in regard to fucking him. 

Eventually, he says, "How long should you be expected to wait - for me?" 

Hawke pulls himself upright to sit across from him. 

"Look, I've had a lot of sex in my life-" 

Fenris scoffs, rolls his eyes, and Hawke smiles. That's a more familiar expression. 

"I have. What I mean is that it doesn't matter. Well- I mean, I guess it...matters, but-" 

He's doing a terrible job at explaining this. But at least Fenris is looking him in the eye now. 

"I've had a lot of sex," he continues, "with people I cared for and people I didn't. But I... have never felt this way before. About anyone. I _love_ you. That's what matters to me." 

Fenris finds his hand and holds it. 

"I don't want anyone else," Hawke tells him when they lie back down. 

They're silent for a while - a long while, before Fenris says, so quietly Hawke almost doesn't hear it, "I love you too, Hawke."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I edited this chapter cause I wasn't happy with it. I'll probably work more on it later, but just in the interest of disclosure, it's different from when I first published it.


	14. Chapter 14

It’s not a party; Varric promised minimal debauchery, a few drinks and a quiet night. After recent events, Fenris can’t imagine anyone would object.

The walk to Lowtown is longer than it’s ever been. Hawke leans on him sometimes, has to stop completely and rest twice. Aside from his courtyard, this is the first time he’s been properly outside in months. 

To Fenris’ surprise, Hawke seemed all but content to never leave the house again, and sparing the occasional trip to fetch something or other, he himself hasn’t found any pressing desire to go back to his borrowed mansion. He realizes not without some apprehension that at least a third of his possessions are at the Hawke estate now, sitting on the desk, tucked into the drawers that have become his. He’s come into his own side of the bed as well, a routine, a shared vocabulary, a map of his body which grows more familiar by the day. 

But the others have missed him, and Hawke misses them as well. As much as Fenris enjoys his conversation, his ability to keep up wanes after a time. Hawke needs someone else to talk to.

Aveline and Donnic call after them as they pass by the market, still in uniform. 

“Your color’s much better,” Aveline assesses, holding him at arm’s length after embracing him. To Fenris, she says, “He’s been resting, right? No chasing bandits?”

Hawke laughs. “He’s not my nurse, Aveline. And don’t try to tell me you haven’t been watching.”

They keep on that way the rest of the walk to the Hanged Man. Varric is sat at a table, already several drinks deep. Merrill and Isabela seem to have been conferring among themselves in a corner, but quickly join the group. 

Fenris is not his nurse, he supposes, though he has learnt more of healing over the past months than he ever cared to. Hawke assured him, so often that Fenris grew very tired of it, that he was under no obligation to attend to him. And even if that were so, he’s healed enough now that he’d have little need.

“We thought you were dead!” Nora exclaims from across the room. A low murmur follows from behind her, a wave of greetings, questions, varying well-wishes from the regulars and serving girls. 

Hawke hugs Isabela and Merrill, individually and then both at once. He clasps Varric’s hand and leans into him, the nearest Varric comes to giving a hug. Fenris inclines his head to them before breaking away to order drinks, but they all know not to touch him.

He’s come to wrap arms around Hawke easily, however. Most nights, sometimes more than once, he wakes gasping and sweating from nightmares, and Fenris holds him, grounds him, until he’s himself again. Fenris knows that dismal cycle, has for many years, but his own dreams are quiet of late, occasionally even pleasant. 

“Oh, I think he’s harmless,” Merrill is saying when he returns. “He just doesn’t know how to talk to people.”

Isabela says, “He definitely knows how to talk to rats.”

Fenris sets Hawke’s drink in front of him and settles in the adjacent space. He thinks perhaps there’s a pause in the conversation when he does, but he can’t be certain.

“It’s not so strange keeping company with rats, you know. Not in the Alienage anyway.”

Hawke leans over to him. “Merrill’s neighbor might be a murderer,” he explains. 

“I really don’t think so,” Merrill protests. “He’s just a little…”

“In this town, I would be more surprised if someone weren’t a murderer,” Fenris says. “Or a maleficar.”

Merill says, “Now that you mention it, I do think he may be an a-”

“No, stop,” Hawke says. “Don’t tell me these things.”

“Why, what-”

“Who’s a maleficar?” Anders slides in next to Isabela, looking frayed and worn as usual.

Fasta vass. Fenris had hoped to avoid him tonight. “You ought to be able to answer that,” he mutters. 

“Oh good, you still hate mages,” Anders says. “Here I was worried you’d grown an ounce of compassion after you’ve-“

“Allow me to steer this conversation elsewhere,” Hawke says. “Wicked Grace? Varric?”

Varric produces his pack of cards, spreads them over the table with a flourish.

It’s a good night, a calm one, or as near as they can come. There comes no descent into chaos, no fights, no dares, no dancing on the bar. Isabela doesn’t even try to cheat at cards. He sits next to Hawke, close, though their focus is rarely on each other. Aveline and Donnic tell a story, or rather take turns correcting each other and never reach the conclusion. Varric complains about his publisher. 

And Fenris lets his hand drift onto Garrett’s knee after a few drinks, seeking him out. It’s strange having him so close without touching him. He glances down at Fenris’ hand and smiles, shifts so that their thighs meet. 

A breath, a heartbeat of stillness, waiting for a reaction that doesn’t come. No one notices - or cares, perhaps. Old news. 

“Look at that.” Fenris’ tongue is thick with alcohol when the Angel of Death appears, when he lays down his four Knights, and rakes in Varric’s and Isabela’s coin. 

“You are cheating,” Isabela says hushed, hand steady on the table so as not to disturb Merrill’s head on her shoulder, “and once I find out how, I’m going to take Martin for all he’s got.”

“Come on, I’ll get you the rest of your coin,” Varric says after counting on his fingers.

He rises, and Fenris follows, a hand dragged across Hawke’s leg. 

Varric stops before he unlocks his door. “I’ve got something else for you.”

“What?”

“Come in, I’ll tell you.” He picks up an envelope from the desk, low scrawled handwriting, and Fenris’ chest tightens. “I heard back from my contact.”

He can’t already have that. It’s barely enough time to get a letter there and back. “From Tevinter?” Fenris asks.

Varric holds out the envelope. “It’s a development. A major one. Read it when you’re ready. And here’s your coin.”

Something is wrong. He is reserved, a departure from his cheerful tone the last they spoke of this. Fenris accepts the envelope, and a heavy bag of gold, turns towards the door, then back to Varric. “What’s happened?”

“You sure?”

“You might as well tell me.” He’ll be able to think of little else now.

“We found your sister,” Varric leans against the desk. “Probably.”

A wave of apprehension rolls over him. Fenris clears his throat. “How?”

“She approached my contact after we sowed a little information. She matches your description. Confirmed details about you she would have had no way of knowing.” Varric shrugs. “I think it’s real, Elf. She sent you a note”

A note. Can she write? That is, if there’s any chance this is truly her. If she ever even lived. If his burned out husk of a memory should be trusted at all. He holds the envelope in stunned silence for what must be far too long.

“You alright?”

“I- I don’t…” It makes no sense to hesitate now. He’s sought this out. “It’s too easy.” He looks from the letter to Varric, who rubs the back of his neck. “Is it not?”

“You’re worried it’s a trap.”

“How could it be anything else?”

Varric cocks his head to one side, opens his mouth and closes it again before saying, “Look, I know it’s a lot to take in. But right now it’s just a letter. Call me an optimist, but isn’t it worth finding out either way? You’re waiting for what’s-his-name to come for you anyway. And who knows? Could be exactly what it says it is.”

He is right, but he doesn’t understand. Fenris isn’t certain he himself understands. 

“Don’t tell Hawke.”

A furrowed brow, and Varric says at length, “I won’t, but I think you should.”

Fenris nods agreement. “If I want to write back…?”

“Leave it to me,” Varric says.

Fenris thanks him, and turns to go. A pat on his back and Varric adds, “Like I said, Elf, right now it’s just a letter. One step at a time.”

He doesn’t read it. He stows it in his pack, then in the drawer of Hawke’s desk before slipping into bed with him, slipping cold hands under the hem of his shirt to feel him shiver, slipping into drowsy idle talk, lips brushing, sharing warmth.

And then he is there. Tevinter, but somehow Kirkwall also. White and gold mosaic tiles that gleam in the firelight, that echo with footsteps, with a cold familiar voice that cuts through his nerves.

“I have found you, my wolf.”

Thrashing, struggling, he wants to call out but he’s choked, heavy iron hinging, closing in. His body bursts and sears, blue light flickering off the floor.

When he screams it doesn’t echo. His hands claw at a bare neck. No collar. 

“Fenris.”

The room is aglow, shadows etched into the bedding, and he can’t hear over the pounding in his ears.

Garrett sits upright next to him, alarmed. That scream must have stretched outside the nightmare. Fenris puts his head between his knees, tightening against the deep ache soaking into his bones, the tremors in his shoulders and hands. It’s been months since he’s hurt this badly, longer since he’s felt that presence in his dreams. 

He needs to get up, to move. Hawke doesn’t say anything when he swings his legs over the edge of the bed, but Fenris can feel him watching. 

The markings burn and itch, but a bit of pacing, of stretching and it’s only on the surface. He used to go outside, walk around Hightown in the dark when this happened, woe to any would-be robber who came across him. But that would worry Garrett.

“Does it hurt?” comes the gentle voice from the bed. 

Fenris swallows and nods, still shifting from one foot to the other, holding his elbows.

“Would that elfroot help?”

There’s a bottle in the cabinet, a mixture Hawke uses on his healing wounds. Fenris’ voice is raspy from sleep. “It will pass.”

“What can I do?” he asks, forehead creased with concern. “Should I leave you alone?”

When Hawke wakes like this, he wants to be touched, held. He would like to do the same for him now; Fenris can almost feel him reaching out. 

“No, but I don’t- I’m sorry.”

Garrett shakes his head. “You’ve nothing to be sorry about. It’s alright.”

The pain, the light from the markings is beginning to fade, replaced by cold, by trembling, weak knees. He looks back towards the bed and Garrett says, “Come lie down, love. I won’t touch you.”

It stings a little, getting in, but the mattress is soft and warm, soothing to his shaky limbs. Heavy as his eyelids are, he tries not to close them, fights sleep lest he return to that horror.

“Unless you want me to, of course.” Garrett rolls onto his side to face him.

He can’t see him well anymore, but he can feel him there, nearly as close as they were before. “I don’t want to fall asleep,” he says.

A flicker, dark eyes illuminated before him, twin flames reflected from the candle behind Fenris. 

“Was it only me or does it seem like there’s something going on between Isabela and Merrill?” Hawke asks.

A distraction. Fenris smiles. “There has been for quite some time.”

His eyes widen. “How do you know?”

“Bela told me.”

“What? She never said anything to me.”

“That’s because you can’t keep a secret.”

A small indignant sound and Fenris snorts. “Do you deny it?”

“I suppose not,” he concedes, and since it seems the secret’s out, Fenris sees no harm in telling him the whole story. 

Garrett listens with a few interjections, and they drift topics: Varric and his house rules for Wicked Grace, Warden Stroud’s mustache, the perpetually sticky floor at the Hanged Man. They drift closer, hands in his hair, a knee between his legs. 

Fenris almost tells him about the letter, but it would be so much to explain, and Hawke would want to read it, would tell him what he already knows is true. They’d be up all night. So he lets it drift further from them, pushes it to the edge of his mind. He nuzzles under Garrett’s chin and drifts into sleep.


	15. Chapter 15

A long time ago, what feels like it anyway, Hawke knew a girl. She lived in Denerim at the same time he did. She tried to pick his pocket and he caught her. Her name was Nat, though he doesn’t think that was her real name. He never asked her.

She had red hair that she kept short and brown eyes like a fox, and she liked to tease him, call him farmer boy because he came from Lothering. At the time, he was apprenticing for a baker. He took what he could and so did she, loaves and rolls and coins and rings.

He hadn’t known her long when the Templars came and took her back from that house where they slept on the floor. Hawke thought maybe they’d come for him too, but they only took her. 

He felt powerless, watching them walk her out in the middle of the night. He felt like a coward. But also, he felt it might be for the better. It was hard, the way they lived, and the Circle would feed and shelter her. They'd protect her.

He heard later, years later, that during the Blight the tower fell to abominations, that most of the mages there were killed. 

But then again, so was Bethany.

….

He’s been ignoring Knight Commander Meredith, her last directive and another unopened letter on the desk. He’s been ignoring, also, a letter from Orsino, one from Warden Stroud, one from Hubert, and several past due notices.

He’s been preoccupied with the handsome elf who seems now to mostly live in his house. Fenris hasn’t abandoned or forgotten his own house; he goes every so often to check on it or pick up belongings, or maybe just to be alone sometimes, like when Carver as a kid would declare himself tired of them all and go sleep in the shed. 

Hawke would offer to spend more time there, but it’s drafty and there are spiders. 

Especially as autumn tips into winter, bruising winds, shards of ice whipping through the narrow Hightown streets. Winter in Ferelden was more brutal, but prettier. Hawke misses the big snowflakes, the quiet stillness. Fenris would like it, he thinks. He’d like to take him there someday.

As it is, they stay here, huddled up with the fire and the wind howling outside. He, Fenris, stays here, in Hawke’s kitchen, in his courtyard, in his bed, within reach. They’re here; he isn’t dreaming. There’s pain still, both of theirs, but it comes and goes, a little less every day. There’s warmth and laughter and bare skin against his, a voice in his ear when he wakes. There’s _him_.

If it were up to him, he’d stay this way forever.

But it isn’t. Responsibility catches up to him finally while he has Fenris in his mouth, straddling him, thrusting into him. There’s a faint rap on the door, which thankfully Fenris seems not to hear, and Hawke is dimly aware of a note passing underneath. 

Hubert isn’t willing to leave him with just a note, which is understandable given that Hawke ignored his last one. Still, his timing is fairly inconvenient. 

“Took you long enough.” He’s pacing around the drawing room. “We have a crisis if you can be bothered.”

“You know, you always look a bit in crisis, Hubert.” Hawke adjusts himself once more as he enters. “I’m afraid I’ve numbed to it.”

Hawke takes some satisfaction in seeing Fenris’ knees shake when he seats himself at the table.

There’s a dragon in the mine, reportedly. Of course there is. Hawke says he’ll take care of it.

“You know, you needn’t always take these matters on yourself,” Fenris says once Hubert has gone. ”You could hire someone.”

“Oh could I? Some strapping adventurer, waiting to steal old man Hawke’s place?”

He’s getting stronger, training again, using magic again. It’s good; it feels normal. As normal as anything feels. 

“I didn’t say strapping.”

Hawke pulls his chest piece on, the nice one, the fire-resistant one. ”Well obviously, I’m not going to hire a homely sellsword.”

“You require a strapping sellsword to carry out your business?” 

He leans against the wall, dressed and ready, his sword on his back. Hawke wishes he’d wear a helmet.

“Of course. I can’t just go recruiting people who aren’t heart-stoppingly attractive. What would people say? Imagine the scandal, Fenris. Think of the damage to my reputation.”

“I’m certain it would be devastating.”

Hawke fastens his belt. “How about you? Are you for hire?”

Fenris laughs and shakes his head. “I think you’ve already hired me.”

“Oh good,” Hawke says, picking up his staff. “I’ll come with you.”

….

It’s not actually difficult to bring down the dragon; living in the Bone Pit is just as unhealthy for her as working in it is for the miners, they speculate. She was slow, limping.

“The dragonlings were the real trouble,” Merrill says on the way back up.

“Still young and full of fight,” Anders says with a mournful crack of his neck.

“Yes,” she says sadly, “it didn’t feel right to kill the babies.”

It really didn’t. The dragon, ill as she was, defended them to her last breath. 

“Place is more trouble than it’s worth,” Hawke says. “Ought to just fill it in.”

From beside him, Fenris grunts agreement. He’s never approved of Hawke associating with it. 

“How are you feeling, Hawke?” Merrill asks.

“When will you people stop asking me that?” he laughs.

Anders says, “When will you stop getting yourself stabbed?”

“Ah, fair point. I’m fine.”

Fenris glances in his direction, up and down, and Hawke nods reassurance. He is fine. A little wheezy, but fine. 

Anders speaks quietly on his other side. “Fill the whole damned city in while you’re at it.”

He looks worn, exhausted, more so than usual. Than ever, maybe. It was almost startling to see him at first.

“How are _you_ feeling, Anders?” Hawke asks. 

He sniffs and shakes his head. “There were Templars knocking at my door recently, if that interests you.”

Unfortunately, it does. It interests the pit of Hawke’s stomach a great deal as Anders recounts the visit, Lynna claiming the clinic as her own as she’s always done, allowing them entry as Anders slipped out the back.

It was a visit this time, not a raid. “You’ll know when it’s a raid,” one of them told Lynna when she asked. They were looking for Evalina.

Merrill says they’ve been at the Alienage too, looking for someone else. Not her, but someone else.

That’s no coincidence. 

“Neither of you needs to worry,” Hawke says, more confidently than he feels. 

A cold wind blows, and Anders blows into cupped hands. “I’m sure the Tranquil in the Gallows will be thrilled to hear that Merrill and I don’t need to worry.”

….

There was a girl in the Gallows. It was years ago, but Hawke thinks of her often. Her name was Ella. He doesn’t remember why he knows that. It wasn’t exactly a long acquaintance, no more than a few minutes. He doesn’t like to wonder what would have happened if they weren’t there during those minutes, if he hadn’t been there.

Anders thought he’d uncovered a plot, and he was right - at least partially - as well as wild and violent in a way Hawke had never seen. Then he was gone, and the girl was left there, with he and Fenris. 

She was terrified, sobbing. He gave her what he had on him, a few sovereigns and a dagger, and told her to run.

Fenris was unimpressed. What, he asked, did Hawke think would become of her outside the Circle? Where would she go? How long until she would be forced into desperate measures? Who would suffer as a result of his gallantry? That was his word - _gallantry_. 

He knew, he knew, he said. It’s not like that hadn’t occurred to him. He said, also, that he was sorry, and he was. He didn’t expect that, and he should have. He nearly didn’t go at all. Hawke doesn’t involve himself in these things. Hawke stays out of all this.

But through whatever impulse, he was there, and to send her back into that place - he couldn’t. Not after that.

….

That night, he catches up on his mail. Bills, thanks, an invitation or two.

More thinly-veiled threats from Meredith. Hawke sags and sets that one aside.

“Avoiding it won’t make it easier, Hawke.”

Fenris’ hands are on the back of his chair.

“Won’t it? I thought if I waited long enough, maybe they’d forget about me.”

He scoffs and leans next to Hawke’s arm, warm and bare from the waist up. His hair is still wet from the bath.

“You’re going to drip on me,” Hawke complains, but he pulls him back in when he goes to move, a hand on his waist.

“Forgettable is not a quality of yours,” Fenris says, “however useful that might be.”

“Thanks.” Hawke turns his head to kiss his bicep. 

“It wasn’t intended as a compliment.”

He knows. His hand is on a sealed envelope. It stays there instead of opening it.

“I suppose I’m going to have to give her something,” he says eventually.

Fenris nods and crosses his arms. “It seems that way. Are you so determined not to?”

“No,” he says, though he’s not certain enough of that to say it. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

Next to him, Fenris bends with elbows on the arm of his chair to look at him. Hawke thinks he might say something, but he doesn’t. He’s asking a question, an old one, one from a long time ago.

“Have I ever told you about Nat?” Hawke asks, knowing the answer. 

Fenris shakes his head and takes the seat opposite him. “You haven’t.”

He tells him about her. About how they found each other, how they huddled together against the world in an abandoned house in Denerim with far too many other vagabonds for comfort - how he loved her, but never said. How he let her go, and doesn’t think he should have. 

That night was terrifying in a way he can’t put into words, but he tries as best as he can, tries to describe the breath-holding quiet and the teeth-clenching noise. He tells him that was the same Circle that held Anders. He tells him what happened there during the Blight. 

Fenris asks a few questions, but mostly listens in silence. He finishes, and he’s still silent.

Until he says, slowly, “I don’t want that to happen to you, Hawke.”

Carefully, truthfully, Hawke says, “I don’t want it to happen to anyone.”

“Hmm.”

Fenris doesn’t agree with that, but he nods. He understands, or he’s trying to. “It is…” he falters, starts again. “Surely you see the need to investigate - blood magic, possession. To protect those who would be harmed by it?”

“You’re right,” Hawke says. 

“Better you than the Templars, for everyone’s sake.”

“You’re right,” he says again.

Fenris lets out a breath and nods, satisfied. “So… where do we start?”

“Probably here.” Hawke produces an invitation, tossed on top of an opened envelope, to a _salon_. “The de Launcets have sent me a few of these over the years. Perhaps it’s time I attended.” 

“Who?” Fenris leans on his elbow, raising an eyebrow, and Hawke crosses to lean over him, to kiss him. 

“Their son is on Meredith’s list.” He laughs. “You’re going to loathe them with every fiber of your being.”

“ _I_ am?”

“Yes, you. If I’m to investigate, you’re coming with me.” 

“I suppose that is only fair.” Fenris smiles up at him.

With that, Hawke changes the subject, passes him another letter. 

“Interesting request from Stroud.”

He wants Hawke to find someone, a Warden Tabris, though he’s careful to specify that he isn’t her commander. She is Fereldan, he says, and he seems more concerned for her than anything. He says she’s likely to be useful to him, that she’s a skilled warrior, “ _not unlike your brother_.”

Fenris reads it over, eyebrows pulling closer together with every line. 

“Hmm,” he hums once he’s finished, “I wonder how strapping she is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did write out that disagreement I referenced in this chapter for a Tumblr prompt - [Here](https://gothkimmyschmidt.tumblr.com/post/182714159943/dont-look-at-me-like-that-for-whoever-you) if you wanna
> 
> As always, thanks for reading. Ya'll make my day/week/life with your kudos and comments <3


	16. Chapter 16

It wasn’t difficult to find Warden Tabris. There apparently isn’t a single person in the city of Kirkwall Varric hasn’t met. An associate, he calls her. Anders, after some evasion, told them she is the very Warden who ended the Blight in Ferelden. That impressed not only Hawke and Varric, but Sebastian as well. He wanted to meet her.

Hawke does not like Sebastian. He doesn’t say so, but Fenris can tell. 

“I didn’t know you had a thing for the Wardens,” Varric tells him while they wait for her in the Hanged Man. “That’s… actually almost interesting.”

Varric doesn’t like Sebastian either, but he makes no attempt to hide it. Next to him, Hawke smirks. 

Sebastian shrugs, or rather inclines his head in what Fenris considers a more elegant version of a shrug. “They are fabled heroes, the only line of defense between life as we know it and the Blight. It seems only natural to respect their sacrifice.”

Hawke says, “Could be we’ve only known poor examples.”

“Speaking of which,” Varric says, “where’s Blondie?”

There’s a shadow of suspicion in his voice, and Hawke says, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up being _delayed_.”

The Warden was looking for Anders, or at least expressed interest in meeting with him. Anders was reluctant.

“You told him your purpose too readily.” Fenris’ voice croaks with disuse, and they all look at him. 

“Mmm,” Hawke hums, and gives him a sideways look. “Subterfuge was never one of my strong points.”

Fenris is in a sour mood, has been all day. They hadn’t fought in months before this week, and his markings are tender and raw; they kept him awake last night. In retrospect perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable for Hawke to suggest he try to avoid triggering them if they hurt him, but Fenris was irritated. He borrowed a phrase he’s heard from Isabela - “fuck that,” which made Hawke laugh.

He was serious. “If I have these accursed things, I’m going to use them,” he snapped, and Hawke stopped laughing. “I’ve not seen you turn down any opportunities to hurt yourself.”

Hawke tugs gently at the hem of his shirt. Fenris doesn’t look up. He isn’t ready to give reassurance. They hadn’t finished when the clock tower chimed them into Lowtown for this appointment.

“Crossbow! Good to see you again.”

The voice comes from behind them, close. Fenris turns carefully. 

“Ah, there she is. Pull up a seat, Princess.”

That’s her. She and Varric are both fond of nicknames, it seems. Lovely.

She’s short, even for an elf, but somehow even more powerful looking for it, not unlike a dwarf. She sits next to Varric, and puts her elbows on the table. 

Varric makes introductions. When he gets to Hawke, she grins and says, “Oh, you’re _Carver’s_ brother.” 

Hawke goes wide-eyed and laughs. “Maker, if he heard you say that, he could die happy I bet.”

For some reason, it didn’t occur to Fenris that she and Carver would have been in the same company. Maker only knows what she’s heard from him.

As if in answer to his thought, she says, “I’ve heard a lot about you,” and Hawke nods. 

“That’s only somewhat worrying.”

“He said you were funny.”

Hawke laughs. “I get that a lot.”

They tell her about Stroud’s letter, which she says makes sense, “in a Stroud sort of way.”

Sebastian breaks in. “We are at your service, and honored to make your acquaintance, Lady Tabris.”

“ _Lady_ Tabris,” she smiles crooked, perhaps a little suspicious, “You’re all so… mannered.”

“Wait til you get to know us before you say that,” Hawke says.

When questioned about her reasons for leaving her company, for staying in Kirkwall, she is oblique at best. According to her, she found the Qunari invasion too pressing to ignore as her fellows intended, and once the threat had passed decided Kirkwall suited her. She did not seem to overly mind parting ways with the other Wardens, and turns down Hawke’s and Sebastian’s offers of employment and lodging. The only thing Warden Tabris seems to want is to speak with Anders.

She gives no indication as to why, precisely, but Fenris has the distinct impression she is unhappy with him. If it were any of his concern, he’d wager that’s why they’re stuck waiting for him - and waiting. 

Hawke asks Varric if he is going to that - party, or salon or whatever it is that Hawke’s family acquaintances have invited him to. 

“No, thank Andraste,” Varric says. “I wouldn’t let Lady Dulci have an advance copy of the second Hard in Hightown. Now there’s some… ”

“Hard feelings? In Hightown?” Hawke offers. 

Fenris stifles a groan. He agreed to go along with Hawke in the moment, but now dreads passing an evening in some vapid nobles’ estate, being mistaken for a kitchen boy every other minute. 

“I will be there,” Sebastian says.

Hawke and Varric both cock their heads in the same way. Fenris can’t decide whether it’s more endearing or irritating. 

“I can only assume the de Launcets had my lineage in mind on inviting me. I doubt I have much interest to bring to such an affair, but I did accept.”

A rather humble confession to make, in Fenris’ opinion, and Varric makes no pause in mocking him for it, encouraged by Hawke’s sniggering. 

“Hey, maybe they need someone to sing the Chant.”

They take to discussing the minutiae of this family and their parties - the guests and their petty rivalries, the food, the fashion. Apparently these salons as they call them are quite popular in Hightown society, and the de Launcets have had to compete for guests. 

Fenris makes eye contact with an equally miserable Warden Tabris before she glances towards the door and a rapacious sort of smile spreads across her face. 

Anders appears at last. He hesitates, but moves towards the table once he knows he’s been seen. 

Tabris rises, calls his name with genuine warmth, but with that predatory smile still on her face. 

Hawke catches on and looks behind them. “Thought you weren’t going to show up.”

Anders glances away then back. “I, uh- _oof_ -” 

A flurry of movement. He bends double, holding his gut, Tabris standing over him, and _who would have thought she was so fast_. 

A collective gasp goes up around the table. Heads turn. Hawke stands halfway, ready to intervene, but Tabris steps back. 

Hawke laughs into the ensuing silence, a single shocked note. 

Anders coughs and sputters with his head between his knees. Once he’s regained his faculties, he says, “Alright - alright.”

“Thought you got away with it, did you?” She’s back to good-natured now.

He straightens, and casts her a wary look. “Are you finished?”

“I told you I’d wreck you. Sit down, jackass.”

He does as he’s told. Fenris’ mood has improved by a significant margin.

”Don’t mind us,” Tabris addresses the table. “Unfinished business.”

“Thanks for that.” Anders still holds his stomach. “You’re a paragon of dependability.”

As fitting as it would have been, she doesn’t intend to re-conscript him. She herself seems to have parted ways with the Wardens. As far as he can tell, she stayed in Kirkwall for the express purpose of punching Anders in the stomach.

“I like her,” Hawke says after he shuts the tavern door behind them, bleary and blinking in the afternoon sun.

Fenris likes her too, though doesn’t trust her much at all. 

“She is… agreeable.” 

That’s partially why he doesn’t trust her. _Fun_ is not a trait he would expect from an organization as grim and shadowy as the Grey Wardens. 

“You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy watching her drop Anders like that.” He laughs, more disbelieving than entertained. “‘Unfinished business,’” he repeats.

“A woman of her word.”

“I don’t know quite what to make of how she said my brother’s name.”

Fenris sniffs, but doesn’t reply.

“Well, Stroud said she might prove useful. We may as well see anyway.”

Fenris says nothing. He’s drawn into himself; his thoughts won’t seem to take the shape of words.

Hawke is hungry, and Fenris recognizes that he himself ought to be, though he doesn’t feel it particularly. He follows Hawke into the market, trails behind as he appraises the vendors he’s seen a thousand times. 

“I’m sorry,” Hawke says, as they huddle in a doorway over two stale husks of bread filled with stew. He offered to “share,” which means he bought two. “I should probably think occasionally before I open my mouth.”

It’s time to finish what they’re started. Fenris looks at him, hunched over wrapped up in his scarf, and takes another bite before he answers.

“Noticed that, have you?”

Hawke laughs, sheepish, an expression which looks good on him.

Most expressions look good on Hawke.

“I didn’t mean to… presume. I just hate that- I don’t want you to hurt.”

Fenris measures his words. “The pain is my choice, Hawke,” he tells him, “not yours.” 

Something passes across his face like he might push back, but then he nods, and says, “You’re right.”

They finish in silence, Fenris passing his to Hawke once he’s had enough.

They’re quiet still on the way back, far too quiet. Hawke has something on his mind. 

“I, um- I was…” 

He trails off, and Fenris waits. He’s tired, sore all over, and not looking forward to the trek back up to Hightown.

“Do you _want_ to go to that party?”

Fenris laughs.

“I’m not exactly wild on the idea either, but of course I’m the one tracking down apostates, so I mean-“

“Hawke,” he breaks in, “I’ll go.”

“It won’t be like Chateau Haine.” He gives him a warning glance from the corner of his eye. 

“Good.”

“I mean, they won’t ignore you. The whole point is to gather up interesting people, and- and, um…”

“Bleed them dry?”

Hawke laughs. “Exactly.”

Fenris has seen his share of parties, balls, dinners, and whatever else. The ones in Tevinter were not quite like the one at Chateau Haine, and he suspects this one won’t be either.

“I understand. I used to be dragged along to these sorts of affairs on occasion.”

Hawke hesitates, perhaps wondering if Fenris means dragged in the literal sense. He does, more or less.

“Would they even let me in?”

“If you show up with me, I assume so.” He pauses at the bottom of the steps, presses the heel of his hand into his chest and coughs. “Or, with Sebastian if you’d rather.”

Fenris squints at him, but doesn’t inquire any further.

“I’ll go. With you. I won’t say I want to, but I will.”

“Good,” Hawke says. “I didn’t want you to if you’d rather not, but I- I’d rather have you there.”

Fenris nods and Hawke offers his elbow for the climb ahead of them.

“Shall we?”

..... 

“You said people would want to… talk to me. There.”

Hawke looks up from the basin where he’s taken up residence grooming his beard. 

“They might, yeah.” He cringes into the mirror and turns to face him. “Probably about some things you’re not going to want to talk about.”

He’s had questions asked about him at various gatherings, of course. Many of them. They were never directed at him.

“What am I expected to tell them?”

He considers it. “It’s not scripted. Say whatever you want. Or don’t say anything if you don’t want.”

“Say nothing?”

“Sure. I think we’ve established brooding works for you.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t brood.”

His silence is far less sullen than people take it. And it isn’t as if it’s ever actually caused anyone to leave him alone.

“Hopefully this won’t take long. You don’t have to go at all. I don’t mind taking Isabela, or-”

“I’m _going_.” At this point, he’s more curious than anything. And bringing Isabela is a terrible idea.

When Hawke kisses him by the wardrobe a few moments later, leaning in and letting Fenris close the distance, his neck and chin are smooth, his beard trimmed close.

Fenris holds his face in his hands, thumbs smoothing over the edge where coarse hair meets skin, and Hawke says, “I usually make a joke when someone asks me something I don’t want to answer.”

“Do you now?”

Hawke smiles, cheekbones rising under his thumbs, because of course he does.

Joking works for Hawke. Reluctant though he may be to play the nobles’ games, he is charming in his own right, and he certainly knows it.

“So they tell me,” he says as he buttons the sleeve of Fenris’ shirt. “Just tell the hosts they have a lovely home, and that’s all you need in order to be polite. But you don’t have to be polite.”

He’s charming and he’s handsome, dashing even in this high-collared shirt and those breeches - those tight black breeches which Fenris would like at the moment to pull down his hips and off of him, to turn him around and bend him over - where? The desk, perhaps. He’d push him, arrange him, kick his feet apart to spread him, to fuck him. Hawke would let him.

But Hawke does want to go to this party, despite his insinuations to the contrary.

It is not like Chateau Haine - finery, but no opulence, nothing gilded or covered in white roses. And it’s nothing like Tevinter. The house is clean, manicured, but without any obvious displays of wealth. An odd color scheme, deep blues and an acidic-looking green, but he doesn’t mind it. 

Somewhere, someone is playing a lute. The furniture is tasteful, unimposing, even potentially comfortable. He doesn’t find out if it is.

It seems Fenris is the only elf in the house. There are servants about, but they’re all human. Odd.

Hawke wanders through the smattering of people milling about the entryway, a momentary brush of fingers as he leads the way. 

“Serah Hawke!”

The hosts don’t fawn over Garrett the same way people in Lowtown do. They still fawn over him, but quietly, gentle like they’re speaking to an invalid, like they’re keeping a secret. 

They are, Fenris realizes, in a way. They must have been there in the Keep that day, seen him use magic - and use it, and use it, until he was stumbling spent. They saw him fight, and _lose_ , nearly. So very nearly.

“How… _are_ you?” the woman murmurs, holding his hand in both of hers.

“Ah, well we’ve survived the journey down the street,” Hawke says, “though we are in dire need of refreshment.”

They laugh. It does work for him. All in one he’s dodged the question, established Fenris isn’t his manservant, and requested a drink.

The woman is looking at him now that Hawke’s brought him to her attention. Looking.

Hawke says, “This is Fenris. Fenris, Lady Dulci and Lord Guillaume de Launcet.”

Fenris. The de Launcet’s are thrown, but are polite. 

“Fenris… yes, pleased to meet you.”

“And you as well,” Fenris inclines his head. “You have a lovely home.”

He means that, actually. They smile, and let them go on their way. 

Sebastian is there already, trying valiantly not to look uncomfortable, standing in a corner. He exhales visibly when he notices them. 

“I’ve never cared for these sorts of affairs,” he tells them.

“I’ve never really seen one,” Hawke says. “I assume it’ll liven up a bit at some point.”

Sebastian glances at him quickly. “It’s not the Hanged Man.”

“No,” Hawke says wistfully. “I wonder if it misses me.”

There’s no dancing here tonight, nor drunkenness really. There is mingling, talking. Talking.

Fenris watches. Watching is familiar. Watching was once all he had, and listening. The things one hears when one listens. Back in Minrathous, someone could and would have paid him handsomely to listen, and to report. The reporting would have been the issue. If he’d only known, understood.

Hawke sees a couple he knows, or who know him, and he introduces Fenris the same way as before.

“This is Fenris.”

He doesn’t mind that. What he should be called, what he is in relation to Hawke is none of these people’s business. He is Fenris.

“My, is that-“ The woman reaches out, eyeing him, his markings, and something sparks in his head. He starts to step back, but Hawke has positioned himself in a way that prevents her from moving forward. Hawke anticipated.

“Velvet, yes,” Fenris says, brushing a hand down the length of his jacket, deflecting. 

The woman pulls back, says “It is quite striking.”

He doesn’t say anything more after that. Hawke nudges him after they’ve walked away. “That is a nice jacket.”

Fenris smiles. It’s Hawke’s, or used to be. He had it taken in to fit him, and it does look better than anticipated. Hawke touches fingertips to his shoulder, rubbing the fabric. 

“I’m going to make a round back to the de Launcet’s, then hopefully we get what we need and go home.”

Fenris nods, remembering what he’s resolved to do to him once this is over. “I look forward to it.”

Hawke catches the heat in his voice, or seems to. “So do I.”

They split, Hawke to talk, and Fenris to listen.

The guests have gathered in small clusters, some engaged in more intense conversation than others. He lingers near Sebastian, who talks far less than Hawke, and they move in comfortable silence among the crowd until Fenris catches the words “mage” and “magic” drift through the tide of conversation.

Two elaborately dressed, balding men gesture at one another, flanked by who Fenris assumes to be their wives.

“... Genitivi’s analysis on the subject, and he seemed to conclude-”

“Genitivi is a Chantry apologist, and you know it, Renaud.”

“The man is a scholar!”

“A Chantry scholar. A blank page in the pocket of-“

“He is an honest man, and devout. If he had found-“ The man looks suddenly to Sebastian and waves him over. 

He makes no attempt to introduce himself, but they seem to know one another. “My dear lad, you are a Brother of the Chantry, are you not?”

“I am,” Sebastian says.

“Why are you-“ the other man starts, but is silenced by a hand held up.

“Were a Chantry scholar to find evidence that our Lady was of magical talent, would they be compelled to withhold that fact from publication?”

The men stare. Fenris notices an elven girl dart out from a side door, grab a dish, and disappear again.

That’s why he hasn’t seen any elves here. They’ve hidden them from view for some reason.

Sebastian speaks at last. “Were such a discovery to be made, of course it would be of importance to Chantry authorities…”

“It would turn the hierarchy upside down!” the second man shouts. “The Circles would revolt! The entire Chant would need to be re-written! The Divine would never allow such a fact to be made public. Can you imagine-”

“That isn’t true,” Sebastian says quietly. “The Chant supports the humanity and dignity of mages, and were Andraste one, the Maker Himself knows it and has-”

His voice rises, but he’s drowned out by more shouting. Fenris watches him attempt to break in again for a few moments before catching his eye and steering him away.

“Pretentious bunch of-“ he mutters, red-faced, as they move out into a courtyard.

Fenris doesn’t know how to respond. A knot has grown in his chest, pulled tighter and tighter ever since they entered the conversation.

Sebastian sighs. “Are you alright, Fenris? You’ve been very quiet.”

Fenris doesn’t know the answer to that. 

Those men, casually discussing the collapse of the Chantry, the dissolution of faith as if it were a spectator sport, so confident it wouldn’t affect them. Oppression and bloodshed under a glass case.

And the way these people look at Hawke, that hushed reverence that now he takes more for hungry curiosity. The same as when that woman tried to _touch_ him. Like she had every right.

Perhaps this isn’t so unlike Tevinter.

“The servants are all human. Have you noticed?”

He nods. “The human servants are paid more, so it’s a sign of wealth to keep them in the front.”

He wants to leave.

Hawke finds them not long after he decides that, having determined that the de Launcets’ son seems to be, of all places-

“At the Hanged Man.” Hawke rubs his chin, annoyed.

Fenris is angry. He doesn’t always know what it is he feels, but this is acute and familiar. It starts low in his gut and spreads out through his chest and throat to burn there like he’s swallowed a hot coal.

This is how he would have, should have felt at Danarius’ parties. They were always his because he didn’t get invited to other people’s. He’s angry now, at this and at the poison he saw poured into drinks under tables, the bodies he saw bought and sold, the people he was made to let see him and touch him because they wanted to, they asked to, they were _curious_. 

It’s always the same. He’s angry and he feels a fool in Hawke’s clothes back on the street. And he is so tired of this, of feeling this.

“Are you telling me _this_ isn’t brooding?” 

Were Fenris in the mood, he might agree. He’s said nothing at all since they’ve left. Garrett is getting worried. 

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Fenris asks.

“I don’t know,” Hawke says. “I feel like I should apologize.”

“There is no need.”

There isn’t. Hawke hasn’t done anything wrong. Hawke has been patient and kind, even when he doesn’t understand. Hawke wants him to be happy.

So why isn’t he? Why can’t he let it go? It’s finished. He’s not the same person he was then. Why can’t he-

“Is that someone we know?”

Fenris looks up. There’s a girl on Hawke’s front steps. An elf. She’s sitting there with her hands in her lap as if she’s waiting. 

She stands as they approach, and he can see her better - dark skin, green eyes. She’s come to Hawke’s house, but she looks at him. His throat constricts. 

“Evening, ma’am,” Hawke says, but she doesn’t look at him. She looks at Fenris.

“Leto.”

She calls him that - his name, that’s his name, that’s his name. That’s _her_. He remembers.

“Varania.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a footnote if you haven't played Mark of the Assassin - Chateau Haine is an estate belonging to an Orlesian fancyman. Hawke and Fenris went to a fancy party there roundabout Act 2 - it was very Orlesian.


	17. Chapter 17

She’s a little awkward - stiff and formal, not unlike Fenris when he first met him. The main difference being that Hawke liked Fenris immediately on meeting him. This woman puts him off.

Perhaps that isn’t fair. She’s just come off a boat from Tevinter after all. From there to here, to Kirkwall, to land on his doorstep at the end of a long evening and shatter whatever calm they had left. His apprehension about her could have something to do with that.

Or that she could very well be working for the bastard who kept Fenris on a leash, in a cage.

_That_ bastard. On the very short list of people Hawke holds a desire to kill with his bare hands, Danarius holds the top position. Unfortunately, a person can only be killed once and it’s not for him to do.

Bodahn laid out food and made tea. Hawke is thankful for something to do with his hands, as this may well be the most uncomfortable he’s ever felt in his life.

She came up with the money herself. Before Fenris could send the rest.

The rest. Before he could-

“You have a place to stay?” Varric asks her.

Fenris wanted to send for Varric right away, right after he finished the aggressive-sounding conversation he and this woman had in Tevene in the entryway to his house. Could be all conversation in Tevene sounds that way. Hawke’s mostly heard Fenris use it for cursing. 

“I meant to take a room,” she says to her lap. “I have a little coin.”

She has nearly nothing. A little pack that can’t possibly hold more than one change of clothes. Some distant reflex in the back of Hawke’s mind twitches, wants him to offer to let her stay. He fights it off. 

“I can find you a spot,” Varric tells her. Looking from Hawke to Fenris, he says, “Well, sweetheart, it’s late. Maybe we oughta come back to this tomorrow.”

Fenris has been largely silent since that tense exchange. The two of them eye each other across the table while Hawke sits trying his best to ignore it.

No one seems the least bit bothered to leave that room. Hawke sends her - Varania - off with Orana to leave her with supplies. Fenris drinks from a bottle of wine in the kitchen. 

Hawke walks out with Varric. 

“So…”

Varric holds up his hands. “He asked me not to tell you. I assumed he would at some point. When he came to me- well, it was before all of-” he motions in the direction of the Keep, “-that. I’m a sap, I know it, but I couldn’t turn him down.”

He smiles and it’s almost enough to cool the burning deep in the pit of Hawke’s stomach.

“Right. Did you pay the rest of her way?”

“No, no,” Varric waves him off. “I’m a sap, I’m not an idiot.” He looks towards the door and lowers his voice. “It’s all gone tits up now, I guess, but before this we were careful. I didn’t see any reason to suspect it’s not legitimate.”

Hawke nods, dazed. 

“Thank you,” he says eventually, “for, um…”

“Mediating?” 

Varric did almost all of the talking. Fenris is out of his mind, and Hawke out of his depth.

“For being here. It’s been a long night.”

Varric puts a hand on his shoulder, and something burns behind Hawke’s eyes.

“Yeah. Good luck with that.”

Hawke’s flask ran dry hours ago, his buzz from the party (Maker, that feels like weeks ago) long faded. He grabs a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet. It feels like there’s something terrible in that room, his room, upstairs, something waiting. It feels like-

_Damp leaking walls, the snap of residual magic, splattered droplets of blood beneath his boots_

-something he doesn’t want to think about.

He’s holding the bottle between his legs. Hawke swigs deeply from his own.

“Don’t get too drunk, Hawke.”

Fenris sits in the window, stripped down to just his trousers. There are buttons on the floor, his discarded shirt with its collar half-detached. 

“I could say that to you,” Hawke says as he unbuttons his own shirt. 

He gives a look that’s equally pleading and scoffing, eyes half-lidded. 

“Look,” Hawke says, not knowing exactly what he means to be looked at, “I know this is- 

Fenris’ chin bobs, challenging. _What is this, Hawke?_

“-a strange turn of events…”

He turns again to look out the window, out at the patrol guard crossing beneath them.

Hawke takes another pull. “How long?”

All this time, they’ve been here, in his house, in his bed, and he never told him.

Fenris doesn’t look at him. “Does that matter?”

“I- Alright. How did she end up at my house?”

“She says she asked a guard for help and he sent her here.”

That actually doesn’t sound implausible. Hawke crosses to the window and leans opposite him. Fenris raises the bottle again, takes a sip.

“You’d been sending her money?”

Fenris sighs. “Through an emissary.” 

Through Varric, he supposes - through Varric’s seemingly endless contacts. Not a bad plan, and maybe it really was none of Hawke’s business after all.

“Well, if it were a trap, it’d already have sprung. Right?”

He shifts around like he’s hurting, like his skin is too tight. The way he has been all week. Hawke leans in and reaches tentatively, waiting for permission. 

Fenris shakes his head, and he withdraws, aching. He feels so far away.

Another pull from the bottle, deeper. He’s timing them carefully. “I wish I knew the answer to that. I’ve made no secret of where I am,” he gestures in front of him, “or who I associate with. Danarius is no fool. If he were to come for me, he needn’t alert me like this.”

Hawke nods. “You’re worried, though.”

“I’m… I don’t know what I am.”

He doesn’t know either. It’s not like with Hadriana, when he was spitting furious and single-minded. Hawke’s never seen him like this. 

“I don’t know what I am either,” Hawke admits, “but I’m right here with you. That won’t change.”

Fenris brushes fingertips against his wrist, over the heel of his hand. 

It’s nearly morning before they settle into bed, on opposite sides. Fenris looks so tired, but he doesn’t sleep, curls into himself with eyes on the door. He needs time alone, Hawke recognizes, but there’s no way he can leave him right now, so he lies next to him on his back, aching and exhausted and not sleeping either. 

He wants to touch him, pull his body beneath his own. He wants to get drunk. He wants to punch a hole in the wall. 

_Something bad, something waiting_

The sheets rustle as Fenris angles towards him, nudges his forehead against his hand. Hawke rolls onto his side and strokes fingers through his hair, over the curve of his cheekbone. It hurts to pull away, but he does after a moment, lets his hand rest between them.

It’s enough to look at him, it needs to be, the straight bridge of his nose, green eyes glassy and creased at the corners.

“You had a sister,” he murmurs, a question unstated. 

Hawke isn’t surprised to hear her mentioned. 

“I did.”

“Bethany.”

“Mmhm.”

“Can you…” he blinks slowly, “Does it bother you… ?”

It doesn’t hurt so much to think of her anymore. Hawke leans in and kisses his forehead, quick, a reassurance. 

“You would have liked her, I think. Better than me, probably. She was smarter than me. And sweeter.”

Fenris smiles.

“Not funnier, though. But close.”

Fenris has heard a lot of stories about Beth. Hawke would tell some again, or try to find some new ones, but he doesn’t. His throat is tight and sore.

“I miss her.” 

Fenris takes a hold of his hand, thumb pressed firm against his palm.

“It’s going to be alright,” Hawke tells him. Fenris makes a soft sound and closes his eyes.

He says it again after he’s fallen asleep, this time to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I know supposedly people in Tevinter mostly use Common, but also I figure there's gotta be some pidgin dialect (that Hawke would have no way of differentiating from Tevene) spoken there. That's what I'm referring to in terms of Fenris and Varania communicating in another language.


	18. Chapter 18

They were always slaves, she and him. Mama was taken from Seheron when she was young. They came later, she then him. 

He knows that, looking at her across the table at the Hanged Man - more than knows. He remembers. 

They never knew their father. He was sold to someone else not long after they were born. He doesn’t remember that; she tells him. He remembers her, though, Varania, his sister.

He used to watch her sew, mending tears and buttons on their clothes. She beaded the hem of a dress with blues and whites in the shape of waves. He remembers the feeling of the cool beads under his fingers. She showed him where she hid the shape of a turtle near a seam, tiny and secret. It meant something to him, but he doesn’t know what.

She wasn’t always so serious, so cold. He remembers her laughing with Mama and the other washing girls. It’s uncomfortable being with her, and it doesn’t help that memories keep crashing into him, washing over him while they speak.

Mama died four years ago, she tells him, of a disease whose name he doesn’t recognize, which causes lungs to close and shrivel. Fenris thinks of sitting with Hawke those nights while his chest rattled and strained and his heart beat so fast, so desperately. 

He cries after she goes, on the floor in Isabela’s empty room, hard enough that his throat spasms and his hands shake. It’s all so much. Some empty part of him that he couldn’t feel before throbs now, in time with the markings on his skin that won’t stop hurting, won’t stop even when they should have by now. 

He hasn’t cried in over a year, not since after the night Hadriana told him he had a sister, the weeks after that. Having seen her now - Varania - it seems absurd that he ever forgot her.

Hawke frowns at him from the bar as he leaves the room. He won’t stray too far. He hasn’t said it, but he’s waiting for something to happen; he’s edgy, tension in his shoulders that isn’t usually there. 

Fenris isn’t, not especially. He’s been waiting for something to happen for nearly six years now. He couldn’t forget if he wanted, an instinct that goes down to the marrow of his bones.

Hawke has a drink ready for him. 

“How was it?” he asks with a careful sideways glance. 

Fenris shrugs, feeling parched and drained. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

He shrugs again, and sips his wine, and asks, “Did you find the- Whatever his name…?”

“Emile,” Hawke supplies. The apostate child of the de Launcet’s. “Yeah, I did.”

Fenris glances around, and Hawke nods towards a man at a table across from Isabela.

“That’s him?”

“Yeah, that’s our dangerous apostate.”

“Hmm.” Fenris drinks more of his wine.

It’s good that the boy came easily, as irritating as it is how much effort they spent looking for him. It’s good, also, that Hawke hasn’t taken it into his head to set him loose. Just because he’s not a threat at the moment doesn’t mean he’ll never be. 

“I remember her,” Fenris says. “I started to remember.”

“You do?” Hawke leans in. “How much?”

“I don’t know how much there is.”

But it feels like so much. So much and not enough.

“Isn’t that- You said that’s what happened that night, after we slept together?”

The night he left, Hawke means. Hawke was cautious about bringing that up at first. He’s since learned a little bluntness. It’s ceased to be a sensitive subject, the spectre of it banished. They’ve talked about it.

But they’ve never talked about that.

“This is different. Then, I didn’t know what any of it was, what any of it meant.”

Hawke is quiet for a while. “And now?”

“I remember her - other people, a little. Not all. It’s- it’s as if…” 

He can’t think of something that describes it. Hawke is better at that sort of thing. He sighs, frustrated.

“Do you want me to call you Leto?”

It takes him a moment to understand the question.

“No.” He can’t imagine Hawke calling him that. “No, I don’t think I could go back.”

Hawke accepts that answer without comment. 

And yet-

“You would do that?”

“What, call you Leto?”

“Yes.”

Could he go back? He didn’t choose this name, but he supposes he didn’t choose that one either.

“If you wanted me to. Might take some getting used to, but-” 

Hawke looks at him, appraising.

“I can see it.”

That tugs something loose in him, heavy in his chest. 

“Too soon to think about that, I suppose,” Hawke shrugs.

Fenris grunts agreement.

“Are you-” Hawke continues, “Do you want to come with me to, uh - deal with this?” He nods across the room.

He doesn’t particularly, but that’s where Hawke needs to go so he agrees.

“Alright. We need to make a stop first,” Hawke slides his mug across the bar, “at the Rose.”

“What?”

Hawke makes eye contact with Isabela and smiles. “I can explain.”

He doesn’t know much about Leto, about himself - the him that isn’t him. He knows that Varania fought with him sometimes, or he with her. About what, he doesn’t know, but that’s what siblings do, is it not? Not so extraordinary.

They stop at the Blooming Rose, which is fairly dismal during the afternoon, to allow the apostate a _moment_ with one of the women there. Fenris doesn’t need to ask how that came about. Hawke is easily swayed by sex and pity. Isabela is entertained - loudly entertained. Fenris hardly hears their banter over the roar of his own thoughts.

He remembers being in that body, Leto’s - because surely that body is not the same one he occupies now. He worked hard; he remembers shoveling and sweating. He didn’t hurt all the time like Fenris does.

Fenris envies that, him. He envies the absence of pain, the warmth and worry and affection he felt. His family. 

He misses them, misses something he barely remembers having. 

Their detour is blessedly short. They leave before the evening crowd starts to filter in. The apostate cries into his hands on the ride to the Gallows, and Fenris tries to avoid the anxious glances Hawke keeps directing at him.

Hawke walks the boy through the door to Meredith’s office, leaving he and Isabela outside. 

“So you-”

“I have no desire to discuss it,” Fenris cuts her off. 

Isabela turns her chin up, and says, “I was going to offer to let you borrow my paddle, but I suppose you can keep being insolent if you’d rather.”

“Why would I- Why do you-”

He’s been so lost in thought he’s nearly forgotten how to communicate. 

“It’s for spanking.”

“I understand the function.” 

At this, she bursts out laughing.

“They’re fun. Do I need to draw you a diagram?”

Laughing hurts his head, but the idea of a spanking diagram makes it difficult not to.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Don’t try to tell me he wouldn’t love that.” She nods towards the closed door across from them.

“Hawke?”

“No, the Knight Captain.”

The few people in the courtyard are starting to look at them. “Must we have this conversation in the middle of the Gallows?”

“Would you rather talk about your sis-”

“No.” 

“I didn’t think so.” 

The door opens.

Something went badly in there. Hawke talks and carries on like before, but there’s something tugging at the edges that wasn’t there before. He lingers a long time in the Hanged Man while Fenris waits outside. 

If he lets himself stand still, his skin feels like it’s pulsing and tightening around him, so he doesn’t stand still. If he focuses on the people passing by, on feeling the dirt under his feet, if he counts his steps, he can stop himself from thinking, so he does.

“Varric thinks he can find her some work,” Hawke says on the street outside. “There’s a Merchant’s Guild family-”

“Why?” Fenris snaps, the headache developing behind his forehead pulses a warning.

Hawke stops. “So she can…. pay for things?”

“She only arrived yesterday. Must we discuss this immediately?”

“It seemed practical, I guess.” He speaks slowly, cautious. “She is staying here, isn’t she?”

It’s meant to be a question with an obvious answer. Fenris rubs his temples and moves forward. Hawke doesn’t.

“What, Fenris? Are you considering shipping her back to Tevinter?”

He’s not moving; he can’t stop himself from thinking. He can’t think. The words burst from him.

“Don’t speak to me as a child. You and- and Varric can discuss my business if you insist, but it is _my_ business.”

His business. His decision. Even as he says it, he knows he hasn’t made any decisions, isn’t making them.

Hawke stands dumbfounded, lips parted but no words forthcoming. Fenris doesn’t walk away, though he wants to.

“I’m-” Fenris sighs, squeezes his eyes shut. It doesn’t help. “I’m sorry.”

He accepts the apology, but something still lingers doubtful behind his eyes. 

“I understand,” he says. “Let’s just go home.”

Home. Hawke’s house. 

He can’t go back there right now. 

“I…. need to go.”

Hawke’s forehead folds and ripples, from unease to outright worry. Fenris adds, “For a while.”

“I- Are you-” Hawke has been on the verge of asking him if he’s alright since last night. Fenris is glad he’s refrained. “I understand.”

He’s worried and hurting, and there’s nothing either of them can do. Fenris kisses him carefully, indents his bottom lip with his thumb, saving the feeling of it.

“I will see you later,” he promises before they part. 

He feels Hawke watching his back as he goes.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing graphic or atypical of canon, but there's mention of some disturbing situations in this chapter. Just so ya know.

Six years ago, Hawke pushed open the door to Athenril’s office, his whole body shaking and burning.

“Do you know what the fuck you just sent me into?” he asked, and she looked confused which in the moment he took as encouraging.

“They’re slavers. That was a slaughterhouse.”

She sat back and blinked up at him, and said, “How do you know that?”

“The slave corpses were a tip-off.” 

Like livestock. The image seared into the backs of his eyelids.

If the words that made him shudder inside had any effect on Athenril, she didn’t show it.

“What did they ask you to do?”

“Um-“ He paused, losing his focus. “Clean up. Dispose of the evidence.”

“Did you do it?”

He nodded, feeling suddenly like a very large child. He did it, because that was the job and because, like a simple country child, he thought she must not know. That if she did, she wouldn’t make him do it again.

“And did they ask you to spend a lot of time thinking about it?”

“No,” he muttered, nauseous and trapped in this little room.

“Then it seems to me you’re doing more work than we’re getting paid for, Garrett.”

That was the job: do as you’re told, and don’t think about anything you’re not asked to think about. She went on to tell him that this isn’t petty crime in Ferelden. That no one is impressed with him here. And that he is useful to her only because apostates are easy to blackmail, lest he get any ideas about that.

Now he stands in Meredith's office with Cullen, once again feeling sick and stupid, caught holding the embarrassing notion that the world is a just, or at least reasonable, place.

Cullen faces Emile. “This will be easiest on everyone if you confess your allegiance now.”

Emile is confused, stammering. “I don’t- don’t- No allegiances, Knight Captain.”

“You’re lying. Do you understand you’re facing execution?”

“No! _No_!” 

He hits a high desperate note and Hawke winces like he’s had a light shined directly in his eyes. 

“Tell me what you’ve done, and I will speak to the Knight Commander on your behalf - but you must cooperate with-”

“No! Please, I didn’t do anything.” He turns to Hawke. “Tell him!”

“I saw no reason to think Emile has broken any Chantry laws,” Hawke says evenly. He’s so tired, aching.

“I will have the truth from you, and if that means wringing it from your neck, then so be it.”

Hawke watches as they go back and forth to the point of hysteria on both their parts, Emile crying, Cullen red-faced and spitting. Eventually, Meredith enters and sends Emile back to his cell. 

She calls it a cell. They’re not even pretending it’s not a prison anymore.

“I am pleased you have proven helpful, Champion,” Meredith says.

“Somehow I don’t think Emile feels the same,” Hawke says.

“The de Launcet’s will surely have an impact on his fate.” She looks hard and unblinking at him. “They are a well-connected family.”

He should keep his mouth shut. He should nod and say nothing, but he doesn’t. 

“Right, I wonder what happens when you can’t buy your way out from under the sword.”

“A shame that you think so little of me, Serah Hawke. You of all people should understand that I am open to allowances under the right circumstances.”

The circumstances being that he’s trading his own freedom for someone else’s. He’s short of breath, underwater.

“You may not know it, but I am trying to protect you,” she tells him. “My advice to you: Do not mistake Hightown’s fascination for support. You are not one of them - and judging by your choice of companions, you have no desire to be.”

That sticks with him, to him, after he leaves. His choice of companions - who does she mean? Or is it a general threat, an attempt to smoke out any apostates he may or may not be hiding? 

Or-

He watches Fenris walk away from him on the street in Lowtown and uselessly regrets going to that party with him.

….

She’s staying in a flop house, with drunks and exiles, the otherwise desperate. Fenris wants to forget her, can’t stay away from her.

She looks at him and says his name again.

“Leto.”

Like she’s been expecting him.

He sits next to her on the narrow cot she’s been given. 

“This is-” 

He looks around the small piss-stained room. 

“You want to stay here?”

“Your… friend offered a bed in the Alienage, but…” 

Merrill. Too kind for her own good.

“I understand,” he says. 

He can’t let her spend another night here.

“You can stay with me.”

She gives no protest, nor any indication of her feelings on the subject. She merely gathers her pack and follows him out. 

They don’t speak much on the way into Hightown, though he wants to point out places he knows, makes a note to do so later once he’s more certain of himself, of her - of himself and her together. 

When they pass by the Amell estate, she slows, lingers. Fenris says nothing, but wonders if Hawke is at home.

He hasn’t been to his mansion in quite a while. The servant’s entrance is slightly ajar, which isn’t unusual seeing as he doesn’t lock it, but unsettles him all the same.

She follows him while he searches the house bottom to top, a habit and a necessary precaution with so many empty rooms. Nothing besides a dead rat in the dining room, which he tosses out a window. 

“Whose house is this?” she asks in one of the bedrooms.

“Mine now,” Fenris says. “I came here looking for Danarius years ago, and never left.”

It’s the first time he’s mentioned that name in her presence. It hangs in the air between them. She follows him into the corridor.

“Looking for him,” she repeats. 

“Yes.” 

He checks the other bedroom without disturbing the soft layer of dust over it. 

“He lured me here with the promise of information. He knew I wanted to know… that I was looking for my past. And short of that, for him.”

It’s freezing in here. He leads her into his own room, bends and builds a fire as he speaks. 

“It was a dead end. When his men failed to collect me, he fled rather than face me.”

He tells her about that night, and glances back after he finishes, finds her looking at him with an expression he doesn’t recognize. He motions for her to sit, and she does, at the edge of his bed.

He’s quiet while he tends to the fire, and so is she.

“Later, he sent his apprentice for me,” he continues, “perhaps knowing he was sending her to her death.”

The more he thinks of that, of Hadriana, the more he thinks that must be true. The coward.

“But,” he settles in, crossing his legs on the floor, “she told me I had family. About you. So I went looking.”

She speaks, finally. “You killed her?” 

“Yes.”

Unlike almost anyone he associates with on a regular basis, Varania isn’t accustomed to fighting, to killing, a fact that hadn’t occurred to him until now.

“If that sounds merciless, well - I suppose it was. I was…”

He sighs. His voice is hoarse when he uses it again.

“I hope you understand how much… This is difficult for me, but - all I wanted was to find you. I risked a great deal in doing so, and I wanted to. I needed to.”

She wraps her arms around herself, uncomfortable. Or perhaps just cold. 

“I wanted to find you as well, Leto.” She looks from the floor to him. “That isn’t your name anymore.”

“No.”

“Fenris.”

“That is what he named me.”

It hurts to have her look at him, but he looks back until he can’t stand to any longer.

“You can stay here as long as you’d like,” he says to the skeletal shape of his hands in his lap. “I don’t sleep here often, but it is mine.”

She nods, and doesn’t ask where he does sleep. He doesn’t offer.

He stands. “I’m- I don’t…”

There’s something else he needs to say, but he doesn’t know what it is. He fumbles.

“You are safe here. With me. I won’t let anyone harm you.”

She has that expression again. He doesn’t know what it is. He holds his breath to keep himself from flinching when she stands and crosses over to him, kisses him on the cheek. 

“Thank you,” she says.

…. 

Like that night he went to Athenril, Hawke softens the noise in his head by getting well pished. Varric’s gone out, but Isabela sits with Merrill and the Warden, Tabris. They wave him over, and naturally he tells them everything in the space of three or five drinks.

“But- Fenris isn’t a mage,” Isabela says. 

“No, but I am, and he means something to me.” 

And he’d thought it would be fun, of all things, to show up together in Hightown society, to cause a stir.

She wrinkles her nose. “Apparently so do I, but no one’s threatening you about it.”

Maybe she’s right. It could be less than he’s making of it. 

“She could have been. Do you want to have Meredith after you?”

“Doesn’t sound like she’d come after him,” Tabris says. “Seems like she was saying the nobles might if you’re not careful.”

“That… actually makes sense,” Bela says.

It does.

Tabris drinks deeply and coughs, and says, “Trust me, they’ll turn on you in a heartbeat. I’d watch my back if I were you.”

“Fuck,” Hawke rubs the side of his face. “We’ve already just sworn off sleep at this point.”

“Oh right,” Merrill says. “How has Fenris, erm…”

“Not good.” 

Merrill clucks sympathetically. “That’s hard, family things.”

“That’s why I recommend not having one,” Isabela says, then jolts as Merrill kicks her under the table.

Hawke is too drunk and preoccupied to be bothered by the comment, but he might have been otherwise.

Bela hugs him tight later when he stands up to leave, perhaps by way of apology. Beautiful Isabela, who stole a whole ship because it was full of slaves. He fought for her because it was worth it; she’s worth more than one of him. At least two. He wants to tell her that, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tells her he loves her, and she kisses the top of his head.

“Tell Fenris to think about what I said,” she says in his ear.

He wants to be home, but doesn’t want to _be_ home. Not alone. 

Because all there is to do here is think - about dripping red rooms and people put in cages. About Fenris falling apart while all he can do is watch and wait. 

Wait. And drink. Numb and heavy, sprawled in the chair in the study with a drink in his hand, he sits and waits. 

He used to drink himself to sleep like this every night, every night the year he worked for Athenril and nights after that too; nights and days that leaked into one another and congealed in a trail behind him. He tried not to look back.

But for all he doesn’t remember well or correctly about that time, he does remember that night he followed a glowing warrior god into an abandoned mansion in Hightown. Carver muttered something about him falling ass backwards into crimes against the Imperium, but for once he was facing forward - starry-eyed perhaps, but facing forward. 

He figured if he were going to fuck himself, it ought to be for this, in service of something good.

A door shuts and reminds him he’s here in his body, floating in the soft dark space at the edge of sleep.

Fenris is in the doorway, and then he’s in front of him, over him, taking the glass from his hand.

“There you are.” 

And then he’s on him, knees on either side of his thighs, hands on either side of his face, forehead against his. 

“Hawke.”

He exhales and feels Fenris breathe with him, into him, pressure releasing from his chest and throat with such force it brings tears to his eyes. His arms and mouth are full of him.

“Are you-” Hawke starts, but Fenris bites his bottom lip and he groans.

Fenris pulls away from his mouth, letting him speak. 

“Are you alright?”

“I’m… unharmed,” he says finally, lightly, hair tickling against his neck.

Hawke sighs a laugh. “Yeah, me either.”

He’s answered with another bite, hard but brief, in the space where his neck meets his shoulder. Fenris holds him with his hips and his hands, presses wet lips against his neck. 

“Mm, do that again.”

He does, pinning his forearms to the arms of the chair. 

It doesn’t hurt as much as it should, dulled by alcohol and sleep and worry.

“Harder.”

He hesitates, still gripping him tight, holding him there.

“Please.”

Fenris groans - they both do, he thinks - as he sinks his teeth in and doesn’t let go.

Hawke’s toes curl, bare against the carpet. He swears and squirms, pulls involuntarily against the pain, and Fenris fights back, fingers and knees digging into him, body held rigid over him. 

He may be smaller, but Fenris is much stronger than him. Aside from using magic, which he would never do, Hawke would have to ask him to let go. Beg him, maybe, depending on his mood. He sags, lets his head fall back, gives in to him.

Fenris releases and kisses, soft and light, into what must be an impressive set of teeth marks. He reaches down between them, between his legs, and pulls back, confused.

“Um,” Hawke’s voice is thick and he smiles sheepish. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m really drunk.”

“Ah.” 

He pulls back, sits back onto his thighs, but Hawke whines quietly and he lays against him again.

“I’m sorry.”

A smile against the side of his face. “So am I.”

“That felt really good.”

“Did it?”

He nods. “I liked it.”

“So did I.”

Fenris shifts to curl against his side, legs stretched over his lap.

“Fen?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m so fucking tired.”

He laughs. “So am I.”

They must have fallen asleep because the candles are burned out when Isabela calls his name.

“Hawke.” 

She shuts the door behind her. He shields his eyes from the stinging light of her lantern, fights back a surge of bleary incoherent rage, and coughs into the crook of his arm. Fenris climbs over the arm of the chair to stand up.

“Why’re you in my house?”

“Well, you’re not gonna like this, but-“

“What _time_ is it?”

“Listen, Hawke. There’s a - problem. In the Alienage. We thought you should see it for yourself.”

Damnit.

“Damnit,” he growls as Fenris pulls him to his feet and towards the door.


	20. Chapter 20

Fenris expected to fight an abomination in the Alienage tonight. Or this morning, rather.

“All fucked up - like, panting and growling and shit,” Bela described, breathless in the doorway of Hawke’s study.

He’s not certain if he’s more relieved or unsettled at not finding one here.

Merrill’s neighbor stares hollow and gaunt like she hasn’t been sleeping enough. He knows the feeling. 

“Take your time,” Hawke says.

She tells them that this is the third time he’s come, her husband, to stand at the end of her bed in the middle of the night. Each time he’s been more erratic, less coherent, less like the man she thought she knew. 

This time, he heaved and sweated, told her he was afraid of what was inside of him. She went and got Merrill, and by consequence Isabela, out of bed, and here they all are. 

Hawke listens to her, sitting on the steps outside Merrill’s house, his breath coming out in foggy puffs, a swelling red-purple bruise on his neck, darker with each passing moment.

It was dark when they left, but Maker he wishes they’d taken a scarf. Bela noticed immediately and looked at him with that look Bela gets when she thinks she knows something. 

“Did he mention anything else?” Hawke asks. He speaks slowly, deliberate. He’s still drunk.

The woman shakes her head. “Like what?”

“Anything. Even if it doesn’t seem important.”

She thinks for a long time. Hawke runs a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at angles.

“No. Not that I can remember.”

From the other side of him, Merrill says, “I’m so sorry.”

She tried to keep him there while Isabela ran to Hightown, but he’d spooked at some point and disappeared.

“He was just- He broke out of my grip.”

“Probably for the better,” Hawke says. “It might be easier if we find him when he isn’t agitated.”

“Please-” The woman breaks into a sob. “Don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him.”

“Of course.” Hawke says, but the look he gives Fenris isn’t assured. 

She says, “He did say something strange. He said that… they made him red, or gave him red - I can’t remember which - at the Circle. I don’t know what it means, but…”

“That could be useful,” Hawke says. “I’ll see what I can find about that.”

“Come on then,” Merrill pats the woman’s shoulder and takes her back inside, “I’ll make tea.”

She puts the neighbor woman in her bed, then sets to bustling in and out of the kitchen, one cup at a time, all the while apologizing for her small kettle.

Fenris sits with Hawke on a fragile-looking bench against the wall.

“Merrill’s solution to everything is tea,” Hawke murmurs fondly. 

Before he can think better of it, Fenris says, “Here I thought it was blood magic.”

Hawke’s head is against the wall, eyes closed. He gives a humoring smile that only serves to deepen the bags under his eyes. Fenris wishes he hadn’t spoken.

He wants to touch that mark on his neck - his. 

From the other room, Isabela’s head emerges. 

“You want a little extra in your cup, boys?”

Hawke opens his eyes and nods. They both do.

“If Merrill’s is tea, Bela’s is liquor.” Fenris says.

Hawke nods. “Between the two of them they might be on to something.”

Bela settles in between them with her cup, Hawke leaning over to rest his head on her shoulder.

It doesn’t bother Fenris when she lays her head on his own shoulder, lets his head come to rest on top of hers. This is familiar. They used to all three of them sleep in Bela’s bed at the tavern when they’d gotten too drunk to walk home.

Still, something pinches in his chest. It pinches when he looks around the corner towards his house and thinks of Varania there. It keeps pinching after they’re home. 

Hawke says he needs to go talk to Aveline about stationing guards in the Alienage, but he sinks down on his bed and doesn’t get back up. 

Fenris wants to follow. He’s tired and wants to lie down and forget about it, but the pinching won’t leave him be. 

“I let her stay. In my house.”

Hawke looks up, pulls himself upright. 

“Your sister?”

He nods. “I was… You should have seen the place she was sleeping.”

“I can imagine,” Hawke says with a knowing look that Fenris doesn’t understand. Why would someone with a home and a family choose to live like that? Why would anyone choose that?

“I wasn’t staying there anyway,” he says, shifting from one foot to the other. “I haven’t been. Not often.”

Hawke sheds his coat and chestpiece, sits in his shirtsleeves tousled and bruised, and after a moment says, “I understand if you want to stay there with her.”

“I don’t,” Fenris says quickly. “That’s not… what I meant.”

Hawke opens his mouth and closes it, says, “Alright then.”

His eyelids are drooping. Fenris approaches to touch his chin, to turn his head and brush fingertips over the bruise on his neck, bends to kiss it. Hawke makes a soft pleased sound and he kisses again, then again, soothing where he hurt it before.

“I want to be here,” Fenris tells him.

They sleep finally, and he dreams about his sister, about their mother, about Leto. He dreams his skin splits open and falls off in long ribbons of viscera that he tosses out the window of his mansion for his Hightown neighbors to pick up and keep.

He thinks Hawke must have strange dreams as well because every time he wakes Hawke seems to already be awake.

They’re waiting for something to happen. But nothing happens.

It rains, and Hawke argues with Aveline about the Alienage. She tells him the wounds from the summer previous are still too fresh, that her guards would be in danger there. Hawke says it was his understanding that protecting people in dangerous situations is what guards did.

He’s never seen Hawke argue like that, not with Aveline. Fenris doesn’t disagree, but it doesn’t escape his notice how the elves in the Alienage look at them - at him, at his body. 

He hates it, them and his body both. The curse just below the surface of his skin is becoming harder to ignore in the day and impossible at night. He wakes throbbing and burning, and it’s becoming harder and harder to move without betraying it.

It rains more, and he helps Varania put together a work room in his house, in what he increasingly thinks of as her house. 

Varric, as promised, found her work as a seamstress for a family of surface dwarves. It isn’t what she’s been accustomed to, but she doesn’t complain so much as comment to herself about the odd measurements. He watches while she holds pins between her teeth, folds hems and seams. He threads needles, a familiar task despite his having no concrete memory of it.

They are mostly quiet - a departure from Hawke’s and Isabela’s and Varric’s constant streams of chatter. He is learning to direct conversation, to ask open but direct questions. She always answers if she can, though sometimes she doesn’t know the answer. 

It snows, sputters, winter’s last gasp. On a whim, he takes her with him to the Hanged Man, hoods pulled low against the wind in the alleys. The cold is new to her, the snow. She says she doesn’t like it, and he thinks that’s the first he’s heard her express any preference for anything. 

He introduces her to Isabela and Merrill, reintroduces her to Varric and Hawke. He hasn’t told her much about them in particular. He thought perhaps she ought to see for herself. 

She doesn’t speak much, but she looks interested enough. Hawke is charming as always, congenial. He makes her laugh, and the sound of it is so distantly familiar it hurts Fenris’ chest. The bruise on his neck is mottled yellow, and nearly faded after weeks of healing. 

“So, I come home and I think she must have given up-”

Hawke’s telling the story of when he first moved into the estate in Hightown, the game he and Isabela used to play. 

“I’ve got new locks, and these are big heavy dwarven fellows, so I think maybe she’s finally met her match-”

Isabela smiles and leans on her folded hands. 

“And I mean, it was an hour, maybe more. I just thought there’s no way she’s that committed. Bela gets bored halfway through taking a bath and wanders off to the bar in a towel.”

“I only did that once,” Isabela says.

There’s a wave of laughter and chatter around the table, but it hushes when Hawke is ready to speak again.

“I’m standing in my kitchen, ready to make a cup of tea, I go to open the cupboard, and- WHAM.”

Here, he throws his hands out, palms spread, for effect.

“All I can see is this white cloud coming at me. My feet go out from under me, I think I yell something-”

Isabela chimes in, “You did, but it wasn’t words.” 

She does an impression of the noise Hawke made when she jumped out from inside his cupboard in a puff of flour and the table is in hysterics, though most of them have heard this story before. Fenris glances towards Varania and sees her smiling with her hand over her mouth. He smiles in turn. 

“Of course, I’ve lost my ability to reason completely.” Hawke shakes his head, raising his voice over the laughter. “I’m an animal. All I know is I’m being attacked. So I cast a blast without even thinking, and I hear this thud-” 

“Which was my head smacking against the door of the cupboard,” Isabela holds the back of her head, demonstrating the motion. 

“The dust sort of parts, and I just see Bela’s boots sticking out from under the shelves.”

Hawke and Bela both are laughing now. Hawke says, “And that’s probably the dumbest way either of us has ever gotten hurt.”

Bela says, “Of course, I could never pull that off again - not with Fenris there.”

Merrill grabs Bela’s arm. “Fenris wouldn't hurt you. Not on purpose, anyway - would you, Fenris?”

“If she threw flour in my face, I might consider it,” Fenris says to more laughter.

Varania is quiet on the way back, quiet still when they arrive at the mansion. 

He’s opened his mouth to ask her if something is wrong when she speaks first.

“That’s where you sleep.” Her gaze is cold and accusing. “With him.”

His stomach clenches around the realization that his waiting so long to tell her is not so far from keeping it secret.

She speaks before he can again. “That is who you serve now.”

“No. No. I don’t-“ he winces, “ _serve_ him.”

Her mouth creases into a tight line, and he knows that look, remembers. She doesn’t believe him.

“Why, because he pays you?”

“He doesn’t-“ Fenris sighs, running through responses, searching for one that doesn’t seem to prove her suspicions. To say that Hawke is his- what? Partner? Lover? It all sounds ridiculous, makes him feel ridiculous. He doesn’t believe himself.

“It isn’t how you think. Hawke is… a friend-“

She crosses her arms. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not-“ He isn’t lying, precisely. He isn’t telling the truth either, and _why_ does the truth stick in his throat?

“You had a place. You were favored. And now- All your talk of freedom…”

“Favored.” He spits the word out like it burns. “Is that what you saw?”

“I saw our mother and I turned out into the street. I saw her dying, dead - tossed onto a pile. Is that called freedom? Is that what you imagined for us, Leto?”

Her politeness and silence have vanished. She’s angry, alive, and so is he.

“He cared for you,” she says. “There was no one to care for us.”

“He cared for me as one cares for a pet. I was his _pet_. You don’t-“ 

He heaves, breathless, pins and needles. His own voice sounds unfamiliar, raw in his throat. 

“Do you see what he _did to me?_ ” 

She looks at him, her lips parted like she might say something else. He looks back. His eyes sting, but he looks back.

She looks away first this time. Her eyes and voice drop. “You don’t remember.”

“I’ve told you, I remember nearly nothing. Whatever created these-“ he lifts his arms weakly, painfully, “took everything I had.”

She nods, still not looking at him.

“Is that what it is to care for someone?” he asks her. “He carved these into my flesh against my will. Does that sound like he cared for me?”

“No.”

He’s tired suddenly, heavy, shoulders hunched. He asks a question he isn’t certain he wants an answer to.

“What did you mean? What don’t I remember?”

She searches him over, up and down.

She sighs. “That is for another time.”

Another time. He wants to ask when, or what, or- something, but he doesn't. She moves closer to him.

“We fought often, back home. Do you remember that at all?” she asks him, a hint of a smile.

He says, truthfully, “It feels familiar.”

“You weren’t wrong - about my not being truthful,” he tells her, because he needs to, because it doesn’t feel finished yet, “but it isn’t what you think. Hawke is- I don’t serve him. He doesn’t pay me. We share what we make, what we have. We are equals.”

She looks up at him, green eyes like his. Her hand is small and cold on his forearm. 

“That sounds like a dream.”

It takes him longer than it should to walk back to Hawke’s house. His hands and feet are nearly frozen solid, but that’s nothing. That’s not what hurts.

Hawke is in his chair in the study, where he sits when he’s waiting up for him - though he denies he was. 

In his bedroom, Hawke says, “I hope we weren’t too terribly obnoxious.”

Fenris looks up. He’s sitting on the trunk by the fire, but he doesn’t remember sitting down.

“You weren’t obnoxious.”

“Well, good. I thought you seemed upset and I didn’t want to be the cause. Unless I am anyway, for… some other reason.”

He blinks, focusing. “I’m not upset with you, Hawke.”

Hawke sits on the edge of the bed. He’s asking a question. Fenris tries to answer.

“It doesn’t feel the way it should.”

Hawke exhales and touches his chin. “Nothing _should_ feel like anything,” he shrugs, “in particular.”

Fenris shakes his head. “No. That’s not true.”

It isn’t. And he knows that.

“Well, how’s it supposed to feel, then?”

“Like-” Fenris breaks off, frustrated. “Like- Something… other than-“

Hawke folds his hands in his lap.

“She’s my _family_.”

“She is,” Hawke acknowledges, “but it’s not that simple, right? You’re still essentially strangers to each other. It might just take time.”

Fenris shakes his head hard enough to dislodge something.

“It’s not that. I know that, and I know how I did feel. Before. I remember how it felt. But it’s lost. It’s-“

He can feel his voice about to break, and he balls up his fist, drives it into the palm of his other hand.

“He took it from me. He _took_ it.”

He lets his hands fall to his sides. Useless.

Hawke opens his arms, and Fenris is on him, against him, before he can even register the movement. It hurts, muscles and joints slackening painfully, breath catching on the way out.

“I know,” Hawke murmurs, fingers threaded in his hair, “I know.”

His chest is warm through the thick fabric of his shirt, and he keeps saying that, saying that he knows.

But he doesn’t know. And Fenris can’t tell him, can barely use his voice anymore. 

_That sounds like a dream_

It feels like one. He’s out of his body when he lies down with Hawke, tells him he’ll be fine, that he just needs sleep. He dreams that he goes back to the mansion and finds her gone, wakes up to his heart pounding, and Hawke still asleep.

The snow has already melted by the time something happens. 

They’re at the Hanged Man, and an elf Fenris vaguely recognizes from the Alienage tells them Merrill sent him for help.

He’s returned, finally. Merrill has him ensnared in thick brown vines, but he isn’t fighting. He sits calmly, greets them when they enter. 

“You’re not as hideous as most of your friends,” Hawke says, crouching to look at him.

“Don’t examine me, human,” he replies. “I am not here for your amusement.”

The woman, Merrill’s neighbor, is watching wide-eyed from the other side of the room. 

“Why haven’t you killed him?” Fenris asks Merrill. 

Sweat beads on Merrill’s forehead and she blinks against it as it drips, holding her staff with both hands. 

“We promised not to hurt him. Maybe we can help him.”

Hawke turns to her. “How? I don’t know fuck all about it.”

“Of course she wants to help the damned abomination,” Fenris groans. 

“I am not an abomination,” the elf says. He looks at Hawke. “Not that it matters to a mage traitor like you.”

“Let’s see.” Hawke flicks his wrist and gathers a small blue flame, directs it at the elf’s bound hand. He curses and struggles.

“I told you, I’m not an abomination. They’re liars. They tried to kill me and I ran. Nyssa-” He looks at his wife, Merrill’s neighbor, “I’m sorry I frightened you. If you stay here, they’ll torture you. Please come with me. Please let me go.”

“Why would they torture her?” Hawke asks. 

“I’m an escaped mage. You think they leave our families alone?”

Fenris draws his sword. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Wait-” Hawke holds up his hand. “What did you mean by the Circle making you red?” 

“Ask the Knight Commander. I’ve heard you’re close.”

“You’re making it really difficult to help you, you know that?”

The air in the room is heavy, hot. Merrill speaks up again. “Not inclined to agree with Fenris, but I can’t keep this up much longer.”

Hawke sighs and turns to Nyssa. He starts to say something, but his voice is swallowed up, the pressure growing and flexing. 

Something flickers, then Fenris’ feet have left the ground. He tucks his chin to his chest before his back hits the wall, then gets back to his feet.

He squints against the whirling dust that’s kicked up in the room. Over the wind, he hears Hawke cough hard, and then a scream and a thud. He strikes out towards the center of the dust, but his sword doesn’t hit anything. 

He strikes out again, one foot in front of the other, head down moving forward into the raging wind. Next to his feet, he sees Nyssa’s limp arm, blood on the floor. He can’t see Hawke or Merrill, but he hears coughing coming from where he thinks Hawke was. 

The temperature drops, drops more, and the dust becomes shards of ice that sting his arms and face. Without a body to hit, he’s useless. There is nothing he can do.

Shouting from the other side of the room, but he can’t make out any words. He braces against a heavy wind from that direction that blows all the ice to one corner. Inside the mass, there’s a solid form, and he leaps, brings his sword down on it. 

It only takes two blows. The wind dies down. His ears ring. 

Merrill holds the wall for support, clears her throat. Hawke is bent double, coughing. 

Something isn’t right. He’s wheezing, rattling, noises Fenris hasn’t heard since- 

He lowers his hand and blood drips down his arm, down his chin. 

Fenris is on him in an instant, a shoulder under his arm. 

“Let’s get to Anders.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna put a tag for this, but I thought I'd put a content warning for *medical stuff* (nothing too explicit, ~~cause I don't know how medical stuff works~~ but there's discussion of an invasive medical procedure). 
> 
> Be warned!

This again. Anders gave him something to make him sleep, and he can’t keep his eyes open; he falls asleep and wakes back up and falls asleep and wakes back up.

Fenris is there again, sitting in that same chair, standing on the other side of the room talking with Anders, then later Aveline.

He sounds angry with Aveline. He says, “This wouldn’t have happened had you stationed a guard there.” Hawke wants to say something, but his throat is too raw to speak. 

Everyone’s angry. Anders was too when they first got there. 

“Well, you’ve ruptured your lung like I bloody said you would if you weren’t careful. I hope you’re pleased.”

Had he been able to reply, he would have said that no he wasn’t fucking pleased. That it didn’t please him to be so fragile still six months after the fact. That he would have done about as much good staying back at the bar. 

Fenris is angry with him too. “Why didn’t you just kill him?” he asks. 

By the time he asks that, Hawke’s voice is strong enough for him to croak, “Sorry,” and that makes Fenris laugh.

“Go back to sleep, Garrett.”

He does, feels fingers wind tight around his own after he closes his eyes.

When he sleeps, he dreams about following a blood trail, big black droplets, and this time, no matter how closely he follows, the trail never leads him anywhere. He goes in circles and in circles, knowing all the while he’s running out of time.

He wakes and Fenris is lying next to him, against him. He isn’t certain he’s really awake so he asks.

“‘Mm I dreaming?”

Lips brush his shoulder. “I don’t know. Am I?”

“We can’t both be dreaming.”

“Hmm. I suppose that’s true.”

Their heads rest next to each other on the rolled up coat that serves as a pillow.

He asks, “Do you dream about me ever?” but his voice cuts out and it comes out a whisper.

“Sometimes.”

He looks at Fenris’ mouth, the shadow below the swell of his bottom lip. 

“I want to kiss you, but my mouth tastes like blood.”

Fenris kisses him, closes the distance between them, strokes his cheek with his thumb.

“I don’t mind.”

“That’s disgusting.”

A smile against his lips as his eyes fall shut. “Then it suits you.”

He wakes again and Fenris is up pacing. Something is hurting him; it’s been this way for weeks, that braced deliberate way of moving he uses when he’s trying to hide it, and Hawke’s been trying not to pry. 

He turns and looks at him, catches him watching and fetches him a glass of water without asking if he needs one.

This again. Breathing hurts, bad. He’s awake enough now to notice how bad, like bubbling acid in his lung every time he inhales. 

Water helps, cool down his throat. This cot hurts his back, and it’s too small. He lets a leg hang over the edge.

“Fen?”

“Hmm?” 

He isn’t pacing anymore, but he stands shifting and fidgeting, uncomfortable.

“How long has it been?”

“You’ve been here since last night.” He glances out the window. “It’s nearly dark.”

“Can we go home?”

He crosses over to him, perching at the edge of the cot next to his head. 

“Tomorrow. I believe Anders intends to speak with you first.”

More lectures, probably. Hawke grumbles low and lets his head fall back. Fenris takes the glass from his hand.

“Still angry with me?” 

“I’m not-” Fenris sighs and looks ahead towards the door. “I’m not angry.”

He shrugs. “You seemed angry.”

“You put yourself at too much risk for people who would never do the same for you.”

He spits it out all at once, still not looking at him.

“Yeah, for all the good it does them,” Hawke mutters. 

Poor Nyssa. He’d promised to protect her, to help her husband, and he failed on both counts. 

Fenris turns, braces an arm on the bed. “For all the good it does _you_ , Hawke. What do you gain from this?”

He does want to reply, but his breath catches in his throat and he coughs, turns his face away. 

This again. It hurts, and he’s so tired of it. He rolls with a wheezing groan to his side, where it’s easier to breathe.

“I don’t have a lot of choice,” he says eventually.

Fenris does not look satisfied with that. “Hawke, I can’t-”

He doesn’t finish that thought, but his hand tightens, tightens, on his shoulder and he swallows hard, then gets back to his feet. 

For a moment Hawke thinks he’s gone back to pacing, but he returns with a vial, the elfroot mixture that’s meant to calm his coughing but doesn’t work - well, not as much as he’d like. 

That’s the end of that particular conversation. The medicine combined with Fenris’ hand rubbing steady circles in his back quiets anything he might have said. Later, he wakes and hears bare feet shuffling on the floor. Up pacing again.

He wakes again and Fenris is gone. Lynna pokes her head in to say hello, cheery like they’re crossing paths on the way to the market. He sees no sign of Evalina, which is a good thing. If she’s left Kirkwall entirely, that’s only for the best.

“I know,” he says, preempting Anders when he enters the room. “I fucked up, I know.”

“I’m not here to scold you.” Anders seats himself in the chair by the bed, the one Fenris usually occupies - only he’s gone, perhaps not able to stomach more of… this.

This again. Hawke remembers all of it this time, was awake for it, though barely by the time they got here. Anders rammed something sharp and metal into his chest and he looked away, stared at his blue-tinged fingertips and squeezed Fenris’ hand. Fenris didn’t look either, said it was _barbaric_ , which struck Hawke as a little funny. Not that he could laugh or speak or breathe to express it.

Anders apologized - “Sorry, but it has to be done.” Hawke felt another arm there, a shoulder much higher than his, cold determined eyes, cold metal in his chest, _in him_ , a memory repeating. Anders laid the tool back down, blood staining the dingy rag underneath. The thought of it now makes him dizzy. 

“Garrett?”

“Hmm?”

Anders is waiting, looking at him. 

“Just making sure you were… there.” He shifts, crosses his legs. He has a book and a pen held in his lap. “How are you-”

“Feeling?” Hawke finishes. “Tired. A little bored. Like my fucking chest is about to cave in. Why, how are you?”

The force of speaking that loudly hurts, chokes him. He clears his throat. 

Anders opens his book and flips through to write something. Hawke watches the lines in his forehead deepen and regrets taking that tone. 

When he’s finished writing he nods towards Hawkes chest. “May I?”

Hawke nods, and wonders what would happen if he’d said no. Lightly, Anders holds his right side just at the scar on his chest, not healing but some sort of magic hums from his fingers. 

“All that dust and dirt,” he mutters. Hawke nods. He had never seen anyone use elemental magic like that, but it was pretty clever. They’d spent hours scrubbing the grime out of every crevice. “Couldn’t have found a better irritant if you’d tried.”

He explains again, the nature and function of lungs, how difficult it is to repair them once they’ve been damaged. _Damaged_ \- a word for cracked book spines or torn trousers, not for bodies. 

“I haven’t used much healing magic on it at all. The scarring is already significant and I don’t want to make it any worse.”

“Scarring,” Hawke says, glancing down to the gnarled flesh on his chest, trying not to picture that under the surface. “I take it that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s certainly not a good thing. It tends to cause pain, which I assume you’ve noticed.”

He has. It never quite went away.

“And you can’t… heal it? With magic?”

“I-“ Anders eases back a little, “No. That’s the short answer, anyway. Anything I could do for it is just as likely to make it worse.”

Hawke takes a strained breath. “So then, it’ll eventually heal on its own?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He returns to the chair, tucks a stray piece of hair behind his ear. “It will, eventually, but if you’re waiting for it to go away completely, I would… advise against that.”

Not the answer he expected, and it it feels like a chunk of his gut is gone, hollowed. 

It must show on his face because Anders says, “It will get better. It will. But it’s a serious injury, and I hope I don’t need to remind you you’re lucky to have lived through it.”

He’s lucky. Of course. Hawke needs no reminding of how very _lucky_ he is, to have survived when so many haven’t. He’s quiet while Anders tells him again what he should be doing to avoid hurting himself further. Fenris comes back not long after, says he tried to say goodbye earlier, but Hawke was too deep asleep to wake. 

“That’s alright,” Hawke says, groaning as he pulls himself into a sitting position for the first time in days. “What matters is you’ve come to carry me home.”

Fenris scoffs, smiles. “I am confident you can manage without that.”

Despite said confidence, he does pull an arm over Hawke’s shoulder and helps hold him up most of the way. Even then, it takes them two extended sit-downs and over an hour to make it home.

This again. He drops into bed and time expands and collapses, twists and shifts. 

He finds a blood trail and follows it into an old foundry. There’s a grimy film over everything he touches. Everything is stained red and he knows already. He knows what he’s going to find. 

His sister picks her foot up gingerly, examining the heel of her boot. She tells him her feet hurt and he ignores her because she and Carver have both been bitching nonstop since the moment they left. She’s dead a few minutes later - _minutes_. The unearthly wail his mother made repeats over and over, the blackened hills behind them closing in. He swallows back the urge to cling to her alive a few minutes ago because the world is ending, has ended already, and if they stop and think they won’t keep going. 

He’s here in his bed and he’s there in his bed, a figure in front of the fireplace, dressed, and that’s what makes his stomach drop. That he got dressed.

He says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Garrett. I feel like such a fool.”

Out the upstairs window, he watches Nat’s shape, so small in between the four Templars they sent for her, being led away. They could have taken on four Templars; they didn’t have to give up so easily - he didn’t. He gave her up and now she’s dead.

There’s weight on his hip, skin on his, solid against his bare back, and it’s real. Here. One of Fenris’ arms is under his neck, the other resting over his hip. It’s him. Lips press into the space between his shoulder blades.

Hawke leans into him to feel him against his shoulders, his hand on his stomach, fingers trailing over his aching chest. Fenris groans low like he’s just waking up, kisses the back of his neck, bites gently - nibbles. Hawke squirms, ticklish, hums approval when he bites harder. 

“You like that,” he muses against his neck. 

Hawke nods, lacing fingers with his own over his heart. “I do.”

“It doesn’t hurt?” He bites again, licks.

“A little. It feels good.”

It feels good. It keeps him here. 

Fingers entwined, he moves Fenris’ hand over his body, breath and lips against his shoulder, his jaw. 

They move together, not quite flush, a knee between his thighs, closer. He moans and Fenris smiles against his neck, bites, bites down hard and brushes fingers just beneath his hip bone. 

He wants to turn, to look at him, but Fenris holds him where he is, breathes hot onto his neck.

“Garrett-“ He hooks his thumb into the waist of his trousers, tugs.

“Fuck,” he whines and bucks against him, restraining himself from just pulling them off himself, “yes, fuck, _yes_.”

He doesn’t need to ask. “Do what you want with me,” Hawke’s told him. A few weeks after that night when he stood in front of the fireplace, after he left, Hawke stood on his doorstep and told him, “Whatever happens, my heart belongs to you. If you want me, I’m yours.”

He didn’t say what would happen if Fenris didn’t want him. He didn’t know. 

Here and now, in his bed, it doesn’t matter. Fenris undresses him and touches him, clutches, thrusts, hard through fabric against his ass - asking.

Hawke answers, gasps, “I’m yours.”

A soft growl answers him and they fall into place.

Fenris’ hand leaves his body long enough to yank his trousers down his hips. Hawke cranes his neck to see him, swollen lips and Fenris kisses him long and deep, holds his face while he kicks his clothes the rest of the way off.

It would be easy to miss the small pained hiss he makes when they roll back together, but Hawke doesn’t. They hold still, Fenris’ length bare and pressed against his ass, his hand warm and firm on his stomach. 

He turns his head again to look at him, at his face, and Fenris’ knuckles come under his chin, lifting it. He kisses his throat, bites.

Hawke doesn't miss that there's something tight around his eyes and mouth when he looks back. No more than he misses the stiff way he holds himself when he walks. The way he gets up and paces in the middle of the night. 

He doesn't forget, even when Fenris bites, releases and pulls, pulls him in, holds him. He's careful when he pushes back. Fenris touches him finally, grips him, wraps his hand around him and it’s so much. He twists, moans, undone.

It's a rhythm, a push and a pull. He lets Fenris decide how much of either. 

He asks for pain, for his teeth on his neck, and Fenris teases, kisses, gives him not enough and not enough, and then so much. 

He comes thrusting into his hand. Fenris releases, kisses once, twice, and rolls over onto him, enveloping him. 

After that, it’s all haze and warmth, gasping shallow beneath him. Fenris finishes himself against his ass, collapses onto his sweat-slicked back. 

Fingers entwine with his again, kisses pressed into his back, his shoulder. 

He doesn’t know how long they lay there, but by the time Fenris pushes himself up and returns to wipe them both off, Hawke remembers his body again, the nagging pain in his chest.

Fenris has also returned with medicine for him, a familiar routine. Not one he’d like to act out after every orgasm for the rest of his life, but if Anders is right, that may be the way of things.

It’s been so long since they’ve done this, since they’ve been so close. Fenris lays his head down on the pillow next to Hawke’s, kisses him, eyelashes brushing his face as he nudges in.

His body is curved away slightly. He keeps a hand firm and deliberate against Hawke’s chest.

“I’m…” A crease appears between his eyes, and he looks away, down. 

He’s hurting. Something is hurting him. 

“I know,” Hawke says with fingers soft on the back of his head. “I mean-“ he moves his hands away, just as deliberately. “I can tell.”

He can tell that it hurts, that he’s hurting. But there must be more. Fenris doesn’t answer for a while.

“I’ve never…” 

“It’s alright,” Hawke says. “Just tell me.”

“It’s… worsening.”

He goes still, and Fenris lets out a breath, swallows hard.

“The markings - whatever process created them requires…. maintenance. Care.”

He’s never brought this up before, not even a hint of it. Hawke watches his face, watches for any sign, any indication - of what the _fuck that means_.

He breathes, asks, “What, um- What kind of…?”

“It was something that Danarius did.”

That name. He knew it was coming, but it sets his nerves on fire nonetheless. Fenris moves so that his head is nestled under Hawke’s chin. So that they can’t look at each other.

“On my own, it came and went,” he continues, “without intervention. I learned to endure it until it passed.”

“But it’s getting worse now.”

“Worse, and… longer. It’s-“ He curls his chin toward his chest. “ _I want it to stop_.”

His voice trembles through clenched teeth, and Hawke’s breath hitches. The only time he’s heard him sound like this was when he talked about Hadriana. 

“Fen, I’m-” _So sorry_. He swallows that; it’s useless. “How long has this been going on?”

“It’s hard to say. Months. In the past weeks, it’s been…”

He pulls back and Hawke looks at him unfocused, his mind working to catch up.

“So then, it’s magic?” he asks stupidly. Of course it is.

“Yes. Though, what sort of magic I haven’t the faintest idea. No one does. He kept his notes under lock and key.”

“Well then we’ll find out what sort. We’ll do whatever we need to.”

His voice has taken a hard edge without his meaning it to.

“Hawke-” He’s shaking his head.

“I’m not just going to let you live with this, Fenris. You can’t just resign yourself to being miserable.”

“I’m n-”

“If that son of a bitch knows how to fix it, then we’ll track him down and discuss it with him.”

Fenris looks surprised at his tone, and he is too. He doesn’t recognize his own voice. But even so, he’s right. There’s no other option. This has gone on long enough.

“I intend to.” Fenris pushes himself into a sitting position and Hawke follows. This is no longer a lying-down conversation. “You don’t determine when that happens.”

“So when does it happen? When do you _intend_ to deal with this?”

Fenris’ nostrils flare. “I didn’t tell you so that you could decide my course of action, Hawke.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

“Because you-” He gets up. He’s going to start pacing again. “Because I thought you should know.”

From his place on the bed, Hawke gestures openly, “Because it’s my business too, right? Because it affects me.”

They never argue like this. Well- they did once. Only once. At least this time they’re already naked.

Fenris sighs fierce, rolls his shoulders. 

Hawke watches him pacing the floor, strong marked fingers curled into fists at his sides. 

“Fen,” he speaks softly, “look at me.”

He does, and Hawke realizes he hasn’t the slightest idea what to say, what wouldn’t sound like _I know what’s best for you_ , or something even worse. So he doesn’t say anything. 

Fenris approaches, sits at the edge of the bed. 

“It’s not fair,” Hawke says at length. “It’s not fucking fair.”

At that, Fenris bends at the waist, puts his face in his hands. Hawke moves to sit next to him.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” Hawke tells him, “and we’ll go after him.”

He nods, without looking up.

“I’m ready when you are.”

Fenris looks up, shakes his head, smirking. “You’ve just injured yourself. I wouldn’t say you’re ready.”

He doesn’t bother with the details. If Fenris can work through pain, so can he. He reaches for him, turns his face towards his own to look him in the eye. 

“I’m ready when you are.”


	22. Chapter 22

He hasn’t been here in a long time, but Isabela found some relic of the Exalted Age and Fenris found himself volunteering to take it to one of the Sisters for further study. 

He regretted doing so almost immediately. The Sister looked at him like she suspected him of thieving and it irked him. The blasted thing can’t even be worth anything or Bela would have sold it. He resolved to stay there and meditate on the Chant a good long while purely for her benefit. She can ask him to leave if she dares.

The Chantry is nearly deserted this time of day. Afternoon sunlight through the tall upper windows catches and illuminates the dust in the air, a slow feeling, warm. He likes it here. 

“Fenris?”

He smiles to himself because yes, it’s him. Not many other white-haired lyrium-marked elves wandering around Hightown to mistake for him.

It’s a formality. Sebastian is unfailingly polite. 

Fenris turns on the bench intending to wave him over, but he’s already sitting down next to him.

“I’d been hoping to catch you here one day,” he says and Fenris cocks his head.

“Here?”

Sebastian chuckles. “A bit far-fetched, I know. Yet, here you are.”

He can’t deny that.

“Something you needed?”

“Not in particular, but it’s easier to talk here than at the tavern.”

Sebastian does not prefer the Hanged Man. He hardly ever comes.

Fenris thinks he’s going to ask about Hawke, but he says, “How is your sister? How does she like the Free Marches?”

“Fine,” he says immediately, then, because that surely won’t be enough to satisfy Sebastian, “She has enough work to occupy her.”

It doesn’t occur to him how bleak that sounds until he’s already said it. 

“I hope there’s more to it than work,” Sebastian chuckles. “Has she made any friends?”

“I…” 

That’s not something Fenris has asked or even thought about. She’s fairly solitary, not unlike himself. He assumes he would still have no friends here had Hawke and Isabela and Varric not cajoled him out of his house and into their company. 

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I wouldn’t be the person to guide her as far as friendship.”

Since that tense conversation about Hawke, he hasn’t brought anyone else up around her, no more than absolutely necessary.

Sebastian furrows his brow. “I disagree. You’ve cultivated a number of friendships in your time here.”

“I took little part in that,” Fenris says. 

“Did you? I think you underestimate your own influence.”

He’s about to tell him that he underestimates Hawke’s and Isabela’s and Varric’s conviviality, but Sebastian seems to read his mind. 

“Perhaps it’s simply a matter of being present to connect.”

Something chafes about that, the notion that his own company is not enough. He himself wasn’t lonely in that house, only happy to have the privacy and shelter it provided. Later he was, but that was under different circumstances. 

“I will… have to consider that.”

Sebastian accepts that, accepts at least that he doesn’t want to discuss it any further. “Has Hawke recovered? I heard-”

“He’s fine,” Fenris interrupts, “fortunately.”

Sebastian shakes his head. “I haven’t decided if Hawke’s luck is a blessing or a curse.”

“Neither have I.”

Hawke is recovering steadily. He’s set back, _complaining_ , but recovering. He wakes most nights coughing and wheezing, but they’ve all but given up on the prospect of sleep by now.

“How have you, ah-” Sebastian pauses, “How have you and Hawke been getting on? Are you comfortable?”

It’s a reasonable question, with what should be a simple answer. It’s none of Sebastian’s business, but Fenris knows he means well. He ought to say _fine_ and move on. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything.

“You don’t need to answer,” Sebastian shifts slightly, angling towards him. “I can’t say I personally have any wisdom to share on the subject, but should you feel the need to talk about it, know that you can come to me.”

“I- I’m-” He stumbles, awkward. “Thank you. That is kind of you.” 

When he meets Hawke and Bela at the Hanged Man, the first thing he says is, “Sebastian asks too many questions.”

They laugh. 

“Worse than me?” Bela asks.

“No, but I can’t fault him for trying,” he says, and they laugh again.

“He thinks I’ve been neglecting my sister.”

Hawke scoffs. “He said that? What an ass.”

“Not-” Of course Hawke took that perspective, forcing him to backtrack. “He suggested I introduce her to more people.”

Bela leans in, towards him. “That’s a bit different from ‘You’ve been neglecting your sister.’”

“I suppose,” Fenris grumbles. 

“I mean,” Hawke says, “he’s got a point. It’s been months since she’s been here, and I’ve only been around her three or four times.”

“I’ve only met her the once,” Bela says, helpfully holding up one finger.

Hawke flags down Corff and orders them a round, and they get to talking about wine before Varric comes out and gets them talking about tobacco and jousting, and Fenris is grateful for the change of subject. 

In his bedroom that night, lying on his back in bed, flushed with wine and smelling of tobacco, Hawke brings it up again. 

“We could bring her out to the coast if she’s never seen it.”

“She’s certainly seen it,” Fenris reminds him. “She came into the harbour the same as we did.”

He shifts on his knees at the foot of the bed, not ready to lie down. There’s still something surging beneath his skin that keeps him moving. 

“Sure, but you know docking isn’t the same as wandering around out there.” Hawke folds his hands on his bare chest. “I barely even remember landing, if I’m honest. I was so damn sick on that ship. The whole time. I hadn’t a pinch of fat on me the first couple years I was here.” He pats his stomach. “There were muscles here instead of- this. Do you remember that?” 

He does. The Hawke he knows now is softer, certainly. 

“There are muscles there still, I assume,” Fenris says. 

“But the first time I went out the gates and saw the water…” He comes back up onto his elbows, alarmed suddenly. “Maker, has she ever gone swimming?”

“Hmm.” Fenris searches for a memory of water. He can swim, something he learned only after jumping off of a sinking raft on a river in Nevarra. He must have known how before.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we should fix that.”

“You want to?”

“I do.” He rolls onto his side, rests his head on his arm. “I didn’t know when to bring it up, but I’ve wondered when you’d bring her around again.”

Fenris hasn’t told him, hasn’t known how to recount that conversation, explain how the two of them take up the majority of his thoughts yet can’t fit comfortably in the same space. 

He comes forward to kneel beside him, to lay a hand in the center of his back. His breathing is strained; that’s why he’s lying on his side like this. 

“Do you need-”

“No,” Hawke says. “It’s fine.”

Hawke prefers to medicate with drink. It seems mostly to work for pain, but doesn’t stop him from wheezing all through the night. 

Not that Fenris minds, altogether. He brushes a hand down his back, over the ridge of his hip. “I see you prefer to complain.”

Hawke looks back over his shoulder, smiling. 

They haven’t been sleeping much, but they’ve found adjacent pursuits, ways to occupy their time spent in bed. Fenris leans over him, kisses his pulse, turns him onto his back again to peel off the rest of his clothes. 

Hawke hums, pleased. “What would I possibly complain about?”

Nearly two weeks passed after Fenris told him about the markings before they touched each other again, and it was during that time they started touching themselves. He doesn’t remember how it first happened - they were in the middle of a mumbled sleep-dulled midnight conversation and then they were lying naked side-by-side, doing what Fenris has only ever done by himself. 

Fenris undresses himself as Hawke watches. 

It was dark the first few times. Having Hawke see him with that distance, being observed, took some adjusting, but now they look at each other, meet each other’s eyes. Hawke bites his lip when he comes, curls his toes. Fenris tells him he likes that. They talk, they say each other’s names.

It feels good. He kept expecting Hawke to want, to ask for more, but he didn’t. After that week went by and those few days, Fenris found himself asking.

He holds himself up with one arm over Hawke’s body, watching him, not touching yet. 

Hawke looks up at him, eyes dark and soft. “What do you want me to do?”

He’s learned from watching. Hawke strokes himself lightly, lighter than how Fenris had been doing it for him. He starts quite slowly, uses his other hand to touch elsewhere, tightens and thrusts with his hips when he’s close. 

“Touch yourself,” Fenris tells him. “Not… there. Not your cock.”

Hawke does as he says, running fingers through the hair on his chest, over his thighs. He closes his eyes, gasps when Fenris dips and kisses his throat, bites. Lightly. Not enough to bruise.

Even knowing that it would be too much, Fenris has to restrain himself from collapsing onto him, driving into him. 

Instead, he tells him.

“Garrett,” he sighs through clenched teeth, “I want to fuck you.”

Hawke opens his eyes, smiles, dazed. “I want you to. I want you.”

He shifts to his knees in between Hawke’s legs. He leans on his elbow and breathes hot over the base of his cock, making him whine. 

It wasn’t enough to watch.

He takes him into his mouth, holding him, hand wrapped around him. Hawke holds still, but he can feel him tense.

Hawke’s warned him that it isn’t easy to make him come this way. Fenris has reached a few conclusions regarding that. 

“Oh, fuck, you’re gonna kill me.”

One being that if Hawke isn’t talking, he thinks too much. 

He hums around him, into him, and Hawke spreads his legs wider. 

“Yes, yes, _please_.”

Another is that a finger inside him changes everything.

He goes slowly, carefully. Hawke moans and murmurs unintelligible, heaves, rolls his hips. His breath is tinged with that painful straining sound, and Fenris pulls off, strokes with his hand. Hawke has an arm behind his head, watching him. 

“Alright?”

He nods. “ _Soo_ alright, feels so good - fuck, you’re so good…”

He’s babbling. He does that when he’s close. He comes onto his stomach before Fenris can even get properly inside him. 

It changes everything.

He wonders what it feels like, but he hasn’t asked Hawke yet. This is enough, Hawke coming forward onto his hands and knees to put his mouth on him. This is so much.

But not too much. Hawke is careful not to touch him anywhere he’s not specifically asked. He doesn’t need to. He is… quite skilled at this.

It’s hard to stay still. He wants to move, to thrust, and Hawke would let him. But he doesn’t. He rests a hand on his head, but doesn’t push. He could fuck him, fuck his throat if he wanted, but he can choose to be patient also. 

He shifts them, comes in Hawke’s mouth while they lie on their sides, Hawke curled next to him. He stays there after, his head resting level with Fenris’ hips. 

“I’m amazed at what you’ll do to get out of talking about your sister.”

Fenris chuckles, rolls onto his back. 

“Not that I mind.” Hawke crawls back up to lie next to him. 

He’d all but forgotten. “The coast, hmm?”

“Yeah. Bring Bela and Merrill. Not Varric, probably; he hates outside. Ask Sebastian, if he’s so keen on meeting her. It’ll be fun.”

Fenris traces the outline of his cheek. “‘It’ll be fun’ will be your last words, Hawke.”

“Maybe. Nothing’s managed to finish me off so far. Though, _this_ came close. Maker.”

His lips are swollen, soft and warm. Fenris licks his bottom lip, sucks it, kisses it. 

“I will ask her.”

….

Varania agrees, despite Fenris’ many assurances that she can decline, and should if she doesn’t want to.

Isabela and Merrill are eager to go, of course. They evidently went hat shopping for the occasion, Bela’s large and black with a folded brim adorned with silver pieces, Merrill’s a more practical woven sun hat with a yellow ribbon tied round it.

As predicted, Varric replied with a resolute “no thank you.” He didn’t ask Sebastian, but much to his dismay, Anders, whom he also did not ask, invited himself along to search for herbs. 

This is rather more people than Fenris would have preferred, but Hawke and Isabela keep Anders occupied enough, and Varania is strangely interested in Merrill. She asks more questions of Merrill than she’s asked him in the months she’s been in Kirkwall.

“Is it true that the Dalish keep no more than two mages?”

“Yes,” Merrill nods, obviously pleased with being consulted, “there is a Keeper and a First. Any others born to the clan are sent to serve other clans - like me.”

Varania nods. “That is different from the stories I have heard told.”

“Right, I imagine you’ve heard some terrible rumors. Before I lived away from my clan, I’d no idea what beastly things people said about us. 

“They say mage children are left in the forest to the wolves.”

Merrill’s face creases and she says gently, “That isn’t true.”

Here, despite his better judgement, Fenris breaks in. “You know every Dalish clan and its practices?”

She gives him a curious look before answering. “I don’t, of course, but there are so few of us to keep our history alive, it wouldn’t do to throw our own children to the wolves, would it? Even if we did fear magic so, it would be an awful waste.”

He grunts in response, resolving to better follow his judgement next time.

The sun is shining fully, which looks a bit strange on the usually grim Wounded Coast. The old gnarled trees that grow in clusters outside the city are green as ever, but now with wild roses blooming tangled around them. The Waking Sea isn’t blue so much as a shade of green that Fenris would typically describe as “sickly.” Today, however, it’s almost pleasant. 

Anders laments that it’s too cold yet to get in the water. Bela and Hawke tell him to speak for himself. 

“I don’t know about you all,” Hawke says, “but I’m getting wet today.”

Bela laughs, but Fenris can think of a few unpleasant outcomes to Hawke jumping into that water. When they settle near the shore, he pulls him aside. 

“Be careful, Hawke. I don’t relish the idea of going in after you.”

Hawke does seem to relish the idea of being rescued. “You’d go in after me?” he asks. 

“Yes, and probably you’d drown me along with you. Wouldn’t that be romantic,” he grumbles, and Hawke, though insisting that it would in fact be pretty romantic, promises to wade in instead of jump.

They pass around a bottle of the whiskey Hawke likes, then a bottle of Antivan wine Bela brought. Even with that in them, Hawke’s and Isabela’s venture into the water is a failure. They drag themselves back out through the waves screaming and cursing, much to Fenris’ amusement. Varania tells him she’s never seen him laugh so hard. 

“Fenris loves other people’s misfortune,” Anders says, but without his usual acid. Fenris ignores him, but he moves closer like he’s been invited.

“Love, has your brother always been like this?”

No one speaks. The moment hangs and Fenris wishes desperately for Hawke to sweep in and change the subject as he is so adept at doing.

Realizing what he’s done, Anders backtracks. “You, uh - You don’t have to answer that.”

Varania looks at him, at Fenris, when she answers. “He was a bit wild, if I tell the truth. He had a smart mouth, but he never seemed to to get into trouble. The housekeepers were fond of him. All he had to do was smile and they would let him off.”

As she speaks, he can see it, just barely. He remembers sitting in a basket meant for washing, watching the maids laugh and knowing he’d gotten away with something.

He has to look away, to hold his breath. 

Merrill appears, thankfully, and drags her off to put her feet in the water. Anders shifts uncomfortably. 

“That was- Sorry.”

Fenris shakes his head, clears his throat, and shrugs. Without warning, the markings pulse, sharp and electric. He exhales through his nose and hopes Anders hasn’t noticed. 

Hawke lumbers towards them, followed by Bela. 

“Fuck _me_ ,” Hawke says as they approach. “I think my heart stopped for a moment there.”

His shirt is soaked through, clinging to his chest. Bela’s in a similarly bedraggled state, visibly shivering. 

“What did I say about your last words, Hawke?” he says.

Hawke sits next to him and kisses his cheek with salty cold lips. “You were right, Fenris.” He laughs, lays back. “Those might be my last words too, huh?”

Isabela’s still on her feet, searching for something. 

“Damn it all, I think I lost my hat.”

Fenris says, “I thought I heard it jingle not long ago.”

She looks up at him, all amusement. “I don’t know why, but the word ‘jingle’ coming from you is really very funny.”

“Oh, it is!” Merrill appears behind her, holding the aforementioned hat. “Do say it again.”

The trip back into the city is peppered with Bela’s and Merrill’s attempts to pull the word from him again. He isn’t certain he could now if he tried.

The two of them walk at the head of the group, fingers wound together, occasionally hip checking each other - too hard on Bela’s part, and Merrill goes off the path, landing in a bramble bush. Isabela is horrified and apologizes profusely. Hawke laughs, but Fenris doesn’t. He falls back as they attend to her.

“Is this-” 

He whirls to find Anders standing at his side. 

“Sorry, I thought you knew I was here.” He nods towards Fenris and says, “Is this something new? I couldn’t help but notice.”

Fenris stares at him baffled, before it hits him Anders was indicating the markings - something which very closely resembles indicating his entire body.

“I know you don’t want me to ask, but I can tell they’re causing you pain. Have they always?”

Fenris searches his face for some ulterior motive, for some mockery, but finds none, at least none that’s obvious. 

“What is it to you?”

“I’m a healer,” Anders says, and leaves it at that.

The others have finished picking vegetation from Merrill’s hair and wave them on.

Fenris says at length, “There is one person who can heal this, and he would rather mine the lyrium from my flesh.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

As they reenter the gates and prepare to part ways, Anders gestures to him again and says, “Let me know if you ever stop wanting to suffer.”

He almost says something back, but what difference does it make? 

Varania is quiet most of the way back, but not sullen like she was before. If he isn’t mistaken, she seems almost content. He and Hawke leave her in front of his mansion - her mansion, and she thanks them for bringing her along. 

“It was interesting,” she says. 

Hawke is undoubtedly content, whistling to himself and chattering through Hightown. 

“What?” Fenris asks him after he practically skips around a corner. 

Hawke stops and looks at him, surprised. “What?”

“I don’t know. You seem - happy.”

He shrugs. “I am. This was fun.” His mouth turns down at one corner like he’s been struck with a minorly unpleasant thought. “Why, are you not?”

It’s as impossible a question as Sebastian’s about his being ‘comfortable.’ He can’t stop thinking of that boy sitting in a washing basket unaware of the chains already around his neck. He can barely remember a time when he didn’t hurt somehow. He doesn’t know what comfortable is. And happy… 

Hawke’s eyebrows are knitted. He’s let this show on his face too easily. 

“I’m fine,” he says, but he knows Hawke doesn’t believe him. 

He isn’t ready to go home. To Hawke’s home, one that isn’t quite his, or to his old house, which isn’t quite either. 

“I’m going to go sit in the Chantry for a little while.”

Hawke is surprised, but doesn’t say anything.

“Would you…” 

He’s nervous to ask.

“Would you join me?”

Hawke lets out a breath, smiles. “Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey tanks for being patient with my updates, y'all. I had some other stuff to work on this week, and as always I am Particular. Pretty sure the next one should be up within the week. Cheers!


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up: There's some portrayal/discussion of PTSD-related flashbacks in this chapter

Something round and dark sits in the corner of a stairwell; Hawke barely catches it, but that is Isabela’s ring, the tarnished gold one she’s worn on her left thumb ever since he’s known her. Straightening, he fights the urge to turn and hold it up for the approval of the empty steps behind him.

This was Fenris’ idea, one that allowed him the satisfaction of being clever while handing its execution to someone else.

The spark from catching the ring snuffs out as he descends the rest of the steps and finds nothing. Hawke didn’t expect find-the-sparkly-thing to be the most emotionally taxing part of this plan. But every moment he loses her trail is one where she’s left alone. 

“I really don’t like this,” he announces to no one as he squints down an alleyway. He draws wind from his center, blows a tentative sweep of the ground ahead of him, which only stirs up a couple of empty bottles.

The cloak-and-dagger bit didn’t bother him, the “chance” meeting in the Rose where he lamented _that pirate tramp_ stomping his heart to pieces, leaned in to listen to an offer the weathered idiot thought was his own. That was easy enough. Hawke plays heartbroken well, or at least that’s what Isabela told him.

A rat scurries across his path. Did they really need to do this in the middle of the night? Frustrated, he’s less careful on the next sweep, gusting dirt and debris out of his path, searching for a scrape of metal or a boot scuff or _something_. They’re running out of time. That’s what bothers him.

“Hawke.”

He nearly startles at the sound of his name. A dab of white blurs against the dark of a storefront. Fenris leans out and holds something up between his thumb and forefinger.

“Buckle.”

“Where was that?”

Fenris taps the corner of the windowsill. “Here.”

A silver buckle set neatly and presumably soundlessly on the edge of a windowsill. Bela’s such a showoff.

“You sure it’s hers?”

Fenris smirks, proud of himself, and nods. “It’s hers.”

“How is she doing that with her hands tied?” Hawke moves forward, crouches briefly at the end of a gutter, a flame at his palm in the hopes of reflecting off of something.

“A good question. Perhaps she’s casting spells in the open.”

Fenris cocks his head when Hawke looks back at him. He’s making light, but he’s got his arms crossed.

“I’m… feeling pressed.”

He’s never taken exception to Hawke’s using magic in public before - not for a long time anyway - but then again it’s never been this dangerous. A week ago, a neighbor of his was arrested for harboring apostates in her estate. He didn’t know that was something Meredith could do, and never would have thought that she _would_ within the ranks of Hightown. Poor Melora. He didn’t know her well, but he can’t help thinking her living near him was unlucky for her.

Best not to think of that. They’re moving too fast. What if they miss something? They can’t afford to backtrack. Hawke wipes his palms on his trousers, forces himself to take a breath.

Beside him, Fenris gives him a knitted look. “Has something gone wrong?”

“No, no, it was fine,” Hawke says. “I mean, I didn’t particuarly enjoy spitting in her face, but no major complications.”

He stares. “You spit in her face?”

“She said she wanted to sell it.”

Isabela had a whole talk with him about the hand-off. Stage directions. “I’m giving you free reign to be disgusting,” she’d said. “Loose every wild urge you’ve ever had.”

Hawke isn’t much of an actor. And he came up short on wild urges. Spitting was the most disgusting thing he thought he could sell.

They find another buckle in the middle of the road. Less artfully placed, but straightforward. There’s only one way to go.

“The docks,” Hawke says.

At least it isn’t Darktown.

Fenris nods. “I’ll get Varric.”

This is the clever part of the plan. Once they know where she, and by association Castillon is, they have a chance to simply take him out from a distance. It was a job Bianca volunteered for enthusiastically. 

Hawke is wary of being left alone, but it’s time to do the rest of the job he signed up for. He did sign up for this, however reluctantly. His body needs to behave. Breathe, Hawke.

It’s not difficult finding the warehouse at all. She left three rings in a straight line leading up to the door. Cheeky. He slips them into his pocket.

At least Bela’s having fun with this. He used to, way back, almost in another life. Another Hawke, one who enjoyed sneaking and scheming, whose nerves were steady, whose throat didn’t close up walking into an unpredictable situation.

Fenris swings around the corner after what feels like hours, nods the all-clear. Hawke starts forward, but a hand on his arm stops him. 

“You’re worried. Why?”

He shakes his head, keeps his voice low. “I just- I have a bad feeling. I don’t know if it’s for a reason or if it’s just a permanent fixture now.”

Fenris grunts understanding and lets go. He’s focused, calm. How is he always so calm?

The side door unlocks from the inside, and Varric is gone by the time they open it.

Breathe, breathe.

For a moment Hawke thinks Velasco was stupid enough to not position guards around him, but there they are. Only a few. It’s easy to take care of. 

And a little fun, if he’s honest. He sets one on fire from a distance and the panic brings the others out. Fenris moves through finishing the main group, and Hawke follows him, blowing and scattering them easily, keeping them off his back. He thinks he hears a bolt or two fire from above him.

Velasco throws open the door and stumbles out, bleeding, Isabela behind him. She smiles and winks, sheathing her daggers. His daggers, presumably.

For a moment, it’s like old times, the four of them out causing trouble.

“You filthy backstabbing _bitch_ ,” Velasco chokes, on his knees. 

“I tried to tell you,” Hawke calls.

But then it changes. He can smell the blood, and he knows it’s coming. Breathe, _breathe_. He’s breathing, but it’s still flashing on the backs of his eyelids, a horned figure above him, bearing down. People staring, pressing in. Screaming. That blade swings, and he dives, and _he’s going to die here_. 

He swallows hard. Breathe. His lungs hurt.

Bela digs around in a desk in the office where he’d had her, comes up with a manifest.

“Hmmm,” she hums as she rifles through it.

The door opens and she straightens, points up at Varric in the rafters, motions for him to hold off.

“Castillon!” She calls his name like she’s the lady of the house welcoming a guest into her foyer. So that she can poison him. “Wait until you hear how I’ve bested you.”

Typical. “And we were sticking with the plan so well,” he mutters from behind her. It’s not getting any better. His lips are starting to go numb, and he needs to get out of here.

She shoots a look at him, and then Fenris, a _trust me_ look. 

“Let me cut to the chase. You’re trading slaves in the Free Marches, and I can prove it.”

Castillon looks about how Hawke would have expected, handsome and scarred and - Antivan. He looks behind him to signal to his own men. 

“What do you want?”

Isabela smiles. He can’t see her face from where he’s standing, but he can hear it in her voice. “I want your ship.”

“Seriously?” Fenris glares from the other side of her, but doesn’t move. 

She ignores him. “You give her to me, and I’ll give you the evidence. And that will be that. You’ll never hear from me again.”

Castillon nods slowly. “Fine. You have your ship, Isabela. We shall see if you-”

“No.” Hawke’s voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else, but he’s definitely speaking. “Fuck that. You’re not working with a slaver while I’m backing you up.”

“Agreed,” Fenris says. 

This seems to be enough for Castillon. He draws his blades. 

“Ah, I see you are overruled. Then let us settle this like-”

There’s a hard metallic click, then _thawck_ as Varric finally takes his shot - a good one, right through the heart. 

A commotion from his men as he drops, falls onto his face, dead before he hits the ground. They start to bolt, but Hawke draws himself up and sucks them back through the door. 

It all seems to move so slowly. Bela draws, but not before turning to fix him with a hateful look. Fenris runs forward to cut through the closest one, a splatter, a blur. Varric picks off one or two, appears a moment later at the bottom of the stairs. 

Hawke’s dizzy, his neck and back soaked with cold sweat. He’s stopped reminding himself to breathe; now it’s the only thing he can think about, like he’s being pulled underwater, lungs burning. 

He’s stumbling, stepping over bodies, then he’s out the door and outside and leaning against the wall. 

This normally happens when he’s alone, when it’s quiet.

_The room smells like blood, the floor slippery with it. His knees and hips hurt from landing on them over and over and the next time he might not get back up._

If he lets it play out again, it’ll pass eventually.

_He’s worn out, finished. He’s going to die here, and then so will she._

“Hawke.”

He looks up. When did he sit down? Fenris offers him a hand and he tries to take it, but his knees are shaking too much.

He lets go and sits. Hawke lets his head fall back again, breathes slowly and deliberately, and they’re quiet for a long time.

Fenris’ hand is on his knee. He hadn’t even noticed. “Do you…want to….talk?” 

He’s no good at this.

“No,” Hawke croaks. “Not right now.”

But he’s trying. 

“Is Bela angry?” he asks.

Fenris snorts. “She was. Then she said we were right. Then she said she wants to punch you in your soft head.”

“I could use it,” Hawke laughs weakly. “What about yours?”

“She had no comment on that.”

“I’m alright.” Hawke answers a question he hasn’t asked. “I think I’m ready.”

Fenris helps him up, and doesn’t let go of his hand after.

….

“If you’re going to lecture me, you can save it,” Isabela says into the drink Hawke’s just handed her. “I wasn’t going to sail off on you, by the way, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“That did occur to me.” Hawke sits. This is their spot, their corner. They always started here back when they used to drink themselves stupid every other night, them and Fenris. “You still could, I suppose. The man’s dead. Won’t be needing his ship, I assume.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t take a dead man’s ship. That’s… tacky.”

“When did you start caring about that?” Hawke laughs, but she fixes him with a mournful almost disappointed look. Like she’d hoped he would understand her meaning and he didn’t. 

“I’m sorry, Bela, but-” he stops to take a drink, “but you know it wasn’t right. You would have regretted it, wouldn’t you?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, you got yourself here in the first place by freeing a bunch of slaves. You didn’t want it to be for nothing, did you?”

“Maker.” She sneers, looks off across the bar. “You really think you know what’s good for everyone, don’t you?”

Hawke nearly reels back, surprised. He tries to stay out of people’s business for the most part. 

“When have I…?”

“Merrill?” 

Oh. That. 

“You played keep-away with her…” she can’t remember the name of the thing. Neither can he. “...shit?”

He was trying to do right by her Keeper, but it ended in her not speaking to him for months. 

“I… tried to stay out of that,” he shrugs.

She makes an unconvinced sound, and he looks at her while she looks off somewhere else. 

“Do you think I was wrong?” he asks after a while.

He came here by himself, after Fenris went out, because he wants to know the real answer to this question.

“No,” she says, but that no has a sharp edge. “I know you’re not wrong. But let’s face it: it’s all easy for you when you could buy a ship of your own whenever you damn well pleased.”

She said something to him years ago, sitting on the floor of the then-empty estate in Hightown. She said, “You’re going to forget what it was like,” and it seemed so mundane at the time. So distant. He thought she was being dramatic. 

“You wouldn’t let me buy you a ship.”

“That’s not the point.”

He drinks deeply. “I know. I know. I don’t exactly have the coin on hand anyway.”

She nods. “Being rich is funny like that.”

For a desperate moment, he thinks he might cry. He swallows it. “The funny thing is I don’t want it. Any of it. I hate it.”

“Then give it up. No one’s forcing you.”

It’s the most reasonable thing he’s heard in months. And yet-

“I can’t.”

She cocks her head. He hasn’t said this out loud yet. 

“I just feel like something’s about to happen. It’s all hanging by a thread, and it’s going to break soon, and I can’t leave it yet.”

He didn’t die in the Blight, and he didn’t die in the Deep Roads, and he didn’t even die when he took a sword through his chest. _Fate or chance_. He’s an animal caught in a net.

Bela looks at him for a while, studying. “I know what you mean.”

“Oh?”

It’s like all the air’s been sucked from the room. It’s just them.

“Yeah. I feel like something big is coming. And if I know you, you’ll be right at the center of it.”

He laughs and it’s almost a sob.

“You’re like the eye of a hurricane, you know that?”

“I’ve heard that before,” he says.

She leans forward to lay a hand on his arm. “I’m not afraid of hurricanes.”


	24. Chapter 24

He chose this.

It hurts, worse and worse. Worse still since she told him, somehow. He thought it would help to find his family, thought it would make him feel like he belonged somewhere, with someone. What did he think he was playing at?

They’ve been walking for hours, the others chattering up ahead of him, but Fenris can’t hear them. He’s barely looked up at all. 

Hawke didn’t ask him to come along with he and Merrill and Isabela, but this is dangerous, and Hawke is too soft on Merrill, too soft as a whole. Anyway, he needed to get out of that place. He couldn’t breathe inside the city walls. He can’t breathe here either, really.

Varania wanted to talk about his markings. She confessed she envied how they’d helped him, how powerful they are, how beautiful. He wanted to know what she knew. He pressed her.

“You competed for them,” she said, then with a sad little smile, “You didn’t even win.”

All this time he thought he’d been deceived, but he chose this. He wanted this, to be marked, disfigured, everything that came afterward. Things he can’t even bring himself to think of. 

“He chose you anyway,” she said, emotionless. It was a fact. 

All those years, told that he wasn’t deserving, that these were a _gift_ , and that he was unworthy. He thought it a lie. He wanted it to be.

Why? She told him he did it for freedom’s sake, but not his own. Not his own, because he got the _better end._

Something accusing. _You left us. The better end._

Why? It isn’t good enough. He doesn’t remember. Can’t, as hard as he tries. What he does remember is separated from time, a rush of moments without a place. Water, moving hands, faces. It’s useless. He has no history, no context.

He thought he could have something, be like other people, but he was wrong. He is no one and nothing.

They’re talking to the Dalish clan, Merrill’s family who she’s shoved aside for her own pride and vanity. It makes him so angry he could choke.

“Look,” Hawke tells the Keeper, “I don’t particularly want to be insert myself into this. I’m only here as a friend. And…. to kill things as needed. As a friend.”

Hawke, ever the optimist, whose good natured flippancy clings to him even as he wakes in the night sweating and shivering, even in the face of impending disaster. Fenris couldn’t stay back. Neither Hawke nor Isabela is truly prepared for what they may need to do.

“Where are we going?” Hawke asks her after they’ve resupplied themselves.

“The-” Merrill glances backward at Fenris, “-spirit that I’ve been speaking with is in a cave to the northeast.”

“You’re not talking to a bunch of frightened villagers. You can just say demon.” Hawke’s tone is significantly less jovial. At least he’s taking it seriously.

Merrill is seemingly unfazed. “There’s less of a distinction than you might want to think. Our world is full of nuance and complexity. The spirit world is no different.”

“Our world isn’t full of slimy creatures desperately trying to get in and corrupt the other side,” Hawke says.

Hawke isn’t especially tall, but he towers over Merrill. So does Isabela. Between them, she looks like a child.

She replies, “I can think of a few incidences of people trying to corrupt the Fade. Something or other about the Golden City, if I recall correctly.”

“Ooohh… shit, I never thought about that,” Isabela says.

“Besides, there are certainly slimy creatures here too.”

“Right. Like your uncle, Hawke.”

Hawke hums, says, “Alright, fair point, but I’m not having any ancient Magisters over for tea, and I’m not much more interested in spirits or demons or whatever.”

“That’s your own choice, Hawke. You’re missing out on a world of knowledge out of fear, but it’s your choice.”

Fenris snorts. How can someone so learned be so stupid? He doesn’t know how Hawke has the wherewithal to argue with her. But still, Fenris is glad he does. It doesn’t hurt for her to have someone reasonable around her.

A rustling comes from behind him. He turns and is almost glad to see spiders approaching. Enough of this discussion. He calls a warning before he charges ahead. 

He doesn’t hurt when he uses the markings; the pain shifts to a low hum and he goes somewhere else, his conscious mind faded. He sees his hands on his sword, fangs, movement blurred as if from far away. 

Long ago, at first, he was afraid of the pain, afraid to let go of himself. There were eyes on him always, wanting something from him, expecting it. These were a gift, after all, given by his Master with great effort and at great expense. He was afraid of the pain, but soon enough he knew there were worse things.

That’s what he wanted. He fought for it. He chose it.

A breath and he comes back to himself, not shaking so much as vibrating, muscles pulsing, twitching. He wipes his forehead, a smear of sweat and blood, turns and launches himself at the dark figure advancing on Merrill.

Hawke shouts and Fenris dodges as heat rushes his side, singeing the hairs on his arm. 

The markings make him difficult to see, for allies and enemies alike. They were intended for solitary defense, certainly not for fighting beside a man who throws fireballs. Somehow though, he and Hawke have always excelled at keeping out of each other’s way.

Before this, before Kirkwall, Fenris was never much for groups. Merc bands found him a liability and though he is a thief, he has never been a bandit.

This is something different. It’s always felt right. Natural.

They slice through spiders for what feels like an eternity. More and more and more, down the mountain until Hawke clears the way and summons enough fire to destroy a small village.

“Well now I’m irritated,” he says, shaking out his hands.

That took a great deal of power. Hawke has it, more in fact than Fenris has seen any mage have on their own, but for that reason he prefers not to rely on other means to boost it. He keeps lyrium on him, but rarely uses it.

Merrill cranes her neck up the path. “Like they’re running from something. That’s not a good sign, is it?”

It isn’t. Yet they go anyway, up the path, through a pass, and back again because she’s gotten lost. Damn her. 

He groans, and Isabela looks back at him. “What?”

“We’ll be here overnight at this rate. Can’t she follow her own map?”

“I can hear you, you know,” Merrill calls.

“Good.”

It doesn’t matter to them, but without anything to fight, he’s left only to think, to remember.

He was angry with Varania, as if that could change anything. He fought with her, tried to describe the pain, the indignity, how it stripped away everything he had. Shouting, he told her that it hurts him still, worse every day. Perhaps it’s killing him, Maker only knows. Perhaps it will kill him before Danarius can find him to skin him alive.

He told her that, and what did he want from her? What did he expect?

She shouted back at him, cried. Through tears, she said, “What good is your freedom, then? What is it worth if you suffer and die?”

The Veil is thin here. Merrill’s cave looms ahead, the air surrounding it teeming with sinister energy. Tragedy occurred here. Bloodshed. Evil things feed off of that. They’re feeding at this very moment. In his head he hears her voice louder than it should be-

_What is it worth if you suffer and die? If you suffer and die, suffer and die, suffer and die-_

Something is very wrong. The Keeper is here, a moment that feels too intimate between she and Merrill for them to stand and watch. 

Then it changes, she does. She screams, skin crawling, bones snapping. Disgustingly familiar, the birth of an abomination. She is lost. A casualty of Merrill’s blood magic. 

Merrill lets out a high-pitched keening wail. Fenris draws his sword. 

This he knows how to handle.

Pride demons are giant and armored, but they’re also slow and nearly blind. Hawke and Merrill can dampen the spikes of electricity that crack and jolt from its fingers, weaken it so that Fenris and Bela can chip at it. 

It is endless, excruciating. He wasn’t wrong about being on Sundermount overnight. 

When they’ve worn it down, the Keeper appears as herself again. She tells Merrill that it’s over, that she is so glad it’s over.

“Merrill,” Hawke says, and he sounds so tired, “it’s not true.”

She does what needs to be done without hesitation, then crumples, cries, screams, vomits. Isabela drops down with her, arms around her. Hawke looks ready to crack down the center.

Perhaps Fenris should feel something - horror, or at the least discomfort, something other than this bone-splitting rage and a thought that he’s never invited:

It isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair that people have everything and throw it away. That even those with decent intentions are corrupted. That the sight of his own skin makes him sick. That he found the one thing he wanted and it hurts him more than anything.

Fair. He would never have thought of that before he knew Hawke. Hawke noticed him hurting and said that it isn’t fair, because that’s how he thinks. Varania doesn’t think that way; fairness doesn’t concern her. Why should it?

People who have had to fight for every scrap don’t have the luxury of caring for fairness. It all makes a terrible sort of sense.

When hunters block the path on the way back down - Tevinter hunters - that makes sense too. He doesn’t need to ask why.

Hawke sees them, pushes a wall of fire at them, knocks them back a ways.

“Don’t,” Fenris tells him. That’s useless; he’ll only tire himself. “Let them come.”

“We’re better off turning back,” Hawke says, measured, still with ordinary mercenaries in mind. ”Try to lose them. Aren’t we?”

No one would have come up here, would have even known to look for him here, on their own.

“They won’t stop.” He hears his own voice, the exhaustion in it, the resignation. Something squeezes tight around his throat. He hears himself and he sounds afraid.

Hawke hears it too, a flicker of recognition. “Shit.” He turns to Merrill. “Can you fight?”

Merrill is ashen, slouched against Isabela. She nods and straightens. 

“Alright.” Hawke retrieves one of his three blue vials and hands it to Merrill. Another he downs himself. “We’ll take as many as we can. Merrill, head up the rocks. Keep a lookout and pace yourself.”

Hawke uses the smoke from his fire to obscure them and they rush forward, pull back, rush forward, pull back. While he’s doing this Fenris can forget to think, but after a time there are no more coming, no more bodies to throw himself at. 

“It’s clear,” Merrill calls. 

Isabela helps her down off the rocks. No one says so, but a fog of anticipation hangs over them. They’ve nowhere to go but back down.

He’s on fire, the markings burning and pulsing, throbbing. Behind the dots on his forehead his head pounds, a harbinger.

It’s all so unnaturally clear, the grains of sandy soil beneath his feet, a flock of birds moving against the darkening sky. He can feel his heart thumping against his ribs. It feels like a night many years ago, across an ocean. If he makes it through this, he’ll remember this moment.

He wants to tell Hawke, to warn him, but he can’t find the words. His nerves are on fire by the time they reach the Dalish camp and spot figures ahead, at the end of the path. A tall robed man surrounded by several Dalish, still and blank, held there with magic. Bodies lying strewn around.

His ears ring.

It was inevitable. All these years of half-sleep, all the false alarms, and now his Master has finally sprung his trap.

His trap. Her. Varania stands small and slouched just behind him. Fenris hears himself make a sound like a wounded animal.

Hawke stops next to him. “Oh, _fuck._ ”

“Kitten, wait-”

Merrill mutters something, tries to hit him with some hex, gasps, and drops instantly. 

“Calm yourselves,” Danarius motions them to come nearer, “before I am forced to take more permanent measures to quiet you.”

He can’t feel his limbs, his heart pounding out of his chest. He feels Merrill pull herself back to her feet behind him. 

Danarius has no more guards, no more hunters around him. None visible, at least. He must not have expected to lose all of them.

“Ah, there he is, and relatively unaltered. He’s come under someone else’s possession, or so I have heard.” He’s looking at Fenris, but speaking to Hawke. 

Hawke looks to him. Fenris says, “Don’t speak of me as if I am not here.”

“Do not trouble yourself, my little wolf. I haven’t forgotten you.” He turns back to Hawke. “Serah Garrett Hawke, the illustrious Champion of Kirkwall - wandering the mountains in the company of two elves and a failed raider captain. A slum prince, even by Marcher standards. I am not surprised you’ve found Fenris’ talents quite useful; from what I hear, you’ve discovered a few more.”

Hawke shifts next to him, but doesn’t draw his staff. “I don’t own him. Neither do you.”

“You could; you simply haven’t the sense to pay for him. Not that you could afford it.”

He laughs, that mirthless chuckle Fenris hears in his dreams on occasion. It turns his stomach.

Varania starts to approach him and Hawke steps nearly in front of him.

“Don’t come near him.”

She’s crying. “Please listen. He can help you. He doesn’t want to kill you. He wants to help.”

“He is a _liar_ ,” Fenris shouts, hoarse, his voice threatening to break.

He feels like something heavy sitting precariously on a ledge, ready to fall. They should attack, but they are exhausted, hobbled. 

Danarius pulls her back by her collar. “You feared I would not want you back, little wolf, but I do-”

So that’s the point of all this. He wants to take him alive.

“I did not _fear_ that,” he spits.

“You don’t wish an end to your suffering? I can heal it. I shall if you let me. Haven’t I always?”

It’s not untrue. He has - or hasn’t, depending on his mood. Fenris never had any knowledge of the process, and never dared ask, but if his Master noticed and deigned to care, he would soothe the pain.

He wanted that. He loved it, used to. The only touch that didn’t hurt.

There is no more discussion to be had. He would rather die in agony than return to that. Fenris draws his sword, words on his tongue that have been there waiting for years.

“You will never put your hands on me again.”

A flash, blue light, and panic rises in his throat as pain sears across the surface, the smell of burnt flesh. 

Like before, when he was branded, his body screaming at him to run but he couldn’t.

Like before, a punishment. He’d forgotten.

His vision flashes white, distant screams which could be his, shouting, the sounds of fighting. He’s dimly aware of his hands on the ground, skin glowing hot. 

Then it stops. Completely. He retches, panting, on his hands and knees, but it doesn’t hurt - for once, it doesn't hurt him. 

He can move, breathe freely.

If he could have this, if he could just have this - a body that functioned, an end to the pain-

It’s a lie. His skin is stretched open and bleeding, dripping down his hand still clenched around his sword. It’s a trick. Hawke swears next to him. He pulls himself upright.

Danarius’ voice, loud but distorted. “Should any of you truly care for him, you will deliver him to me before it is too late. I will spare these wild elves, and reward you handsomely.”

He’s cast a barrier around himself and those surrounding him. Hawke has been attacking it uselessly, wasting his energy, the emotional idiot. Isabela is knelt beside him, speaking, but he can’t hear her over Danarius.

“Serah Hawke, surely you are capable of reason. You would squander your own success for this?”

Hawke nods. “That’s right.”

“Captain. You will have your ship and more.”

“Get fucked,” Bela says.

A delirious laugh escapes Fenris as he puts weight on shaking knees. Danarius doesn’t know what to do with this. They’ve killed his guards, and now refuse to simply hand over his slave.

Infuriated, he yanks one of the elves to her feet, cuts her throat, a gesture so familiar and so casual it curdles Fenris’ blood. Between them, a line of demons appear, shades, lurching towards them. 

This is it. A last stand. He’s found them in a bad position, but were Fenris facing him on his own, he would already have lost. 

Merrill uses Hawke’s last lyrium potion to cast a glyph around them, solidifying the shades. Once they’ve a physical form, they can be hit, hacked apart. 

Bracing himself against the pain, he leans into the markings again, lets himself go. He moves quickly, hardly knowing where he is, but every time he looks back Hawke is behind him.

“We can’t wait for him to run out of sacrifices,” Merrill says, surprisingly evenly, and she’s right. They need to get to him.

“Don’t follow me,” Fenris says before he moves ahead.

Barriers made of magic are all well and good, but no more impenetrable than wood or stone. If he hits it enough, it will break.

It might take too long, it might be too late, but he is certain that if he hits it enough, it will break.

So he hits it, and hits it, again and again. This close, even through the shifting arcane light, he can see the lines and wrinkles and spots on the old man, can see his confidence begin to crack.

Danarius is trying to hurt him again, trying to drop him like he did before, peeling and tearing at his skin, but he doesn’t care, can hardly even feel it. He’s an open wound; it doesn’t matter.

And he knows how to let the pain drive him on. He’s learned. Regretting that particular lesson now, Master? His face splits into a grin.

The barrier is shaking, flickering as its caster’s focus drains. He grasps for another of the elves, young and freckled and frantic behind glassy blue eyes, a means to his end, a beating heart, a knife to a neck - and he’s pulled back, a thin hand on his shoulder.

Varania’s hand. She clutches his robe, and he turns to brush her off. Fenris rears back and hits the barrier with what is surely the last of his strength. 

It dies. And then flickers back to life.

They’ve broken down his defenses but still he’s at full strength, bolstered by blood, by death. He’s found them here when they were weak, easily worn down.

He grabs Varania by her neck, throws her down. He goes back to his task, a dark spray of blood that raises the corpses on the ground.

“My Fenris,” he says, “how I have missed you.”

It isn’t fair.

“You’ll remember your affection soon enough.”

It’s quiet behind Fenris, Isabela motionless behind Merrill, who is somehow still standing against the advancing bodies. He can’t see Hawke.

Until his arm appears, his staff bashing against the barrier.

Hawke’s injured, blood running down his shoulder, out of his nose, and he’s all spent, worn down; he has nothing left except the blunt end of his staff. It’s effective. Fenris reaches out and through the weakened wall of magic to grab and pull.

Danarius struggles, held by the front of his robes, a man just like any other without his money and his blood magic, his slaves. He’s made of flesh, and his heart beats fast, terrified, in his chest, in Fenris’ hand. 

He crushes it. Rips it out and lets it drop. 

Then he turns, pushes forward.

Her.

He still has his sword in his hand, which he realizes when he sees it swing at her, miss just barely. She screams and jumps out of its path. 

“Was it coin?”

“Please-” She’s sobbing.

“How much?”

Hawke says something he can’t hear. He swings again and he’s knocked back, an ethereal boot in his chest. 

Magic. 

“ _You’re a mage._

All this time, all this time- 

She holds her palms out in front of her. “You didn’t remember. I wanted to tell you. I wanted-” 

“A place in the Magisterium, then?” He stands still, bent. He’s panting ragged, but his voice has gone cold. His hand drips, slippery. 

“No.” 

“Is that why you _sold me_?” He’s shaking, but he doesn’t move. 

“No, no, no-” She backs up, shakes her head. “He told me-” she breaks off, sobs, “he said he could help you. He said you’ll die without him. He could give me my old work back, protect us. We could- we could have a chance to-” 

“You have no chance at all,” he says, advancing, swinging, then he’s caught around the waist and pulled back. 

“Let me go.” He jerks away, shoves Hawke off of him. 

“Fenris, don’t.” 

“And why not?” He doesn’t take his eyes off Varania, twisting her hands and crying. 

“Because she’s your sister. And it won’t do any good.” 

Hawke stands far enough back that Fenris could rush forward without being stopped. He’s bloodied, bruised, big dark eyes wide and pleading. 

Fenris lowers his sword, drops it, knees hitting the ground, then hands. He can’t stand up anymore. 

Muffled, he hears Hawke say, “Get out of here,” and tucks his head towards his chest, moans, grey light crowding the edges of his vision. 

He’s won, but he’s cold, raw, hurt - badly. Worse than he’d thought. He’s won. This time, he’s won. Blood drips down his forehead and throat, his clothes wet with it, dirt in his wounds, and it doesn’t matter. He lets himself fade into blank grey space, where he’s thoughtless and alone. 


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally finished this dang chapter! (((as a warning there's discussion of violence, slavery, and implied sexual abuse in this chapter)))

He barely sees Fenris for the next two days. 

Not that Hawke isn’t near him, in and out of the mansion, stifling the impulse to hover, but he scarcely sees more than the rough shape of him, passing by every so often, a hand or a sliver of his face under blankets. 

He doesn’t seem to leave his bed at all the first day, save to piss and drink from the bottle of wine Hawke put outside in the hall. The jug of water he ignores until apparently deciding to dump it onto his head before retreating again, a stream flowing down the marble stairs.

Hawke wouldn’t have gotten out of bed himself were it not for him. He can’t shake that moment from his head, Fenris facedown in the dirt, soaked in blood. The feeling that he’d lost him, that they’d gone through all that only to lose him.

He has no idea how they would have gotten back had Varric not got worried and brought Anders and Warden Tabris to look for them, injured as they all were, and Merrill’s clan on the verge of attacking.

And Fenris, dazed and breathing shallow, not responding when they called his name. He wouldn’t let Anders within five paces of him, didn’t want to be healed. He got up and limped off when he heard his voice. 

Far away from the rest of them, he let Hawke help him flush out the open wounds winding around his body. 

Hawke couldn’t breathe looking at it, the surface of his skin, could barely even see the markings in some places for the swelling. They had to mostly cut him out of his armor, blood congealing thick, sticking.

He remained impassive while they worked, cold water and the one clean rag they brought, stained red. If he didn’t know him better, Hawke might have thought him numb to it, but he recognized the movement of his eyes, the way the muscle in his jaw twitched, stashing the pain away until it’s safe to show it. 

He prattled on stupidly, filling the silence. “I think your back looks the worst out of everything, aside from your throat. Have to get used to sleeping on your side for a while.” Fenris sleeps on his back most of the time, a holdover, Hawke suspects, from a lifetime of sleeping on hard surfaces. 

“I’ll bet that mist contraption I made would work for putting poultice on it. Bodahn’ll have to let me have it back for a while, get his plants all poulticed. He’ll love that, won’t he?”

“You plan to mist at me with poultice?” His voice came out a rough whisper, a ghost of a smile in it, and Hawke nearly sobbed with relief, but he held it back.

“Well,” he said, cleared his throat, “You don’t want me to touch it, do you?”

“No.” 

He held Hawke’s arm for support on the way back home, bleeding cracks in the palms of his hands.

It takes Hawke the better part of two days to get his magic back completely, an unfamiliar powerlessness he isn’t fond of. Yesterday, he was sore enough to make walking difficult, but he and Isabela cobbled their abilities together to drag and push all of Varania’s things into the cellar. Once Fenris is back up and moving, he can decide what to do with them. Right? He’s never dealt with this sort of thing before. He doesn’t know how it’s done.

Nor does he know what to do with Fenris. He wants to be left alone, but he badly needs healing. As promised, Hawke tried to repurpose the watering device he made for Bodahn, but it was less than effective.

“Fenris?” He knocks, and hears feet hit the ground, shuffle slowly before he pulls open the door.

His throat and upper chest are one big scab, but the rest of him doesn’t look as bad. He looks groggy, not an expression he’s used to on Fenris. But then, he’s hardly slept at all in the months they’ve been together, and he can only imagine how little before that. Maybe he’s catching up.

He leans his forearm against the door frame, listening.

“I’m going to go out for a little while, take care of some things.” His hands look significantly better - maybe he’s been using the medicine after all. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you need to eat something today. Do you want anything in particular?”

He’s fussing, hovering. He was prepared to be chased out, but Fenris hasn’t seemed to mind this so far. 

He leans, thinks. “An apple.”

Hawke smiles. “Just one?”

“Green.”

“You need to eat more than that.”

Fenris nods, apparently having exhausted his preferences for the day. “I will endeavor to eat what you bring me.”

“Alright, I’ll find you some apples.”

He nods again, says, “Thank you, Hawke.”

  
  


“Thank you, Serah Hawke.”

He stops in his tracks, hoping he didn’t really hear that.

Standing at the edge of the alley next to the mansion, yes, there she is.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Varania approaches, slowly like she might startle him off, something held in both her hands. “I came to give you this. It may prove useful to you.”

It’s a book, thick and bound in soft-looking black leather, a metal chain hanging off.

“It was locked, but-” she shrugs, “I broke it open.”

It’s heavy, worn pages sticking out. It’s a grimoire. It’s-

“This is… his?”

“Yes.”

She can’t read it. Fenris said she can manage scarcely better than him when he started. Hawke had thought to find her a tutor, perhaps for she and Orana both. He put it off. 

“I thought it would be useful,” she says.

He thought there would be a later.

They’re standing in the street, him holding his malfunctioning watering device looking and feeling an absolute fool, and she holding this huge chained book. Directly under the window.

He’s not ready to take it, to walk away. “Do you know where you’re going to go?”

“No,” she says.

He shouldn’t have asked.

“Come on.” He waves her to follow him.

She hangs back. 

“I’m going to my house,” he holds up the glass and metal in his arms, “and if Fenris sees you out here that won’t be ideal for anyone.”

She follows. She turns down his coin, shaking her head and looking pained in his courtyard. So familiar. She looks like her brother, her nose, her eyes. She looks at him suspicious.

“Why would you help me?” she asks after a long silence.

“Because you need help.”

He answers quickly without thinking about it, without looking up from his mess of tubes and bottles. He hopes Bodahn doesn’t come out, or Maker forbid, Orana. She was surprisingly heartbroken on Fenris’ behalf.

It won’t do. He sighs, turns back to her. “Because- Because I think that life- or the world, or people have been unkind to you-“ Unkind really isn’t a good enough word. “Awful. Unjust. And you haven’t had anyone to help you who didn’t expect something in return.”

She’s looking away from him, but she’s listening, arms wrapped tight around her.

“And I haven’t had it that way. Not really. I’ve always - wherever I’ve been - had people to help me.” Even when he hasn’t helped them back, even when he’s failed them. “And I think when you don’t have that, it makes the world feel cold and brutal, and it makes you bitter, and…. hateful, and-“ a flicker of her eyelid tells him that was the wrong word. “Maybe not hateful. Scornful?”

This is an ending, and one he wasn’t prepared for. He’s fumbling, out of his depth. She answers with tears, and his own voice chokes. “I know he has a hard time showing it, but he really cared for you. It kills me that it ended like this.”

So now he does what he can.

There’s no reason for her to stay after that. She still turns him down on money, but accepts a sack full of supplies.

“Will he…” She pauses at the door. “Do you think he will ever forgive me?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say he’s a particularly forgiving person.” Hawke shrugs, wanting in spite of everything to offer something hopeful. “I do, if that means anything.” Facedown in the dirt, lying on the floor of his bedroom groaning in pain. Maybe forgiveness is a bit hasty. “I mean, I will. Eventually. I can’t speak for Fenris, but who knows.”

She exhales, shuddering. “You’ll take care of him.”

“Yeah. As much as he’ll let me.”

She leaves after that, and he sits against the stone entryway looking at the book.

It’s been stuck in his mind for the last two days, lurking behind the necessity of healing and traveling and waiting.  _ He said you’ll die without him.  _ There was no sense asking if it was true. Varania thought so, or at least enough. She thought so enough to throw away what she had with him.

Sitting here now, staring this ominously dark black and chained book - a  _ tome _ , he finds himself thinking - it all feels so beyond him. Why did this never occur to him before? They say even an errant drop of raw lyrium can be deadly. He supposed he’d always assumed it was treated somehow to make it- what? Safe? Would that have concerned Danarius? He may well have had no reason to ensure that his slave live past his viable fighting years. Like a workhorse with its joints all worn out.

This line of thought is making him nauseous. And the book isn’t his to have, or even to open.

He tucks it into his pack and tries to forget it, tries to ignore the sensation of something slipping through his fingers. 

It isn’t what he came for, but he asks Anders in the clinic anyway - vaguely, as if there is any way to bring up the potential effects of lyrium branding without naming Fenris. 

Anders hardly pauses before answering. “I’ve thought about that. I tried to ask him once, but shockingly he wasn’t interested in discussing it.” He sits in the rickety chair by his desk, turned away from an open book, the pages Hawke asked from him copied onto a loose sheet. He looks ill - thin and tired and rumpled.

“I don’t know much about it, to be truthful,” he continues. “I suppose I always figured if it were going to kill him or drive him mad, it would have already. Or perhaps the madness set in long ago.” He shrugs, a weak laugh to himself, then clears his throat into the silence. “Has he let you near enough to assess the damage?” 

Damage. That word bothers Hawke. “Not really.” 

Hawke came looking for something to teach him, a mage who has nearly never cracked a spellbook, to heal. Ridiculous, but he has to try, at least.

“Thank you for coming to our rescue,” he says. “I don’t know what we would have done otherwise; we were a sorry mess.” A confluence of tragedy horrifying enough to almost be comical. Even by their standards. “I need to check on Merrill. Bring her flowers or something.” Bring Merrill flowers, and bring Fenris the spell book of his dead former master. 

“Can I ask you, are you sure about this?” Anders scoots back, crossing his arms, and Hawke blinks hard to clear himself.

“About flowers? No. Knowing me, that’s probably something horrible in Dalish tradition. Is it?”

“Ah- No. Well, I don’t know. I meant about- Fenris. You saw him back there.” His voice drops to a grumble and Hawke tenses. “Like a wounded animal. He wouldn’t-”

“It’s not like that’s his usual state,” Hawke says, stomach clenching in surprise. “He doesn’t trust you.”

“And he does trust you? You’re different?”

“From you, yes.” He meant to sound hard, final, but instead he only sounds sharp and defensive.

It wasn’t his intention to fight, but now it’s too late. Anders takes the time to turn fully facing him before he speaks. “And that’s good, is it? That you’re not like me.”

“I didn’t mean it like-”

“Because I spend nearly every waking moment healing people - every moment that I’m not following you around doing your bidding. If one of us is to be feared-”

“You’re possessed,” Hawke throws back. “I’d say that’s cause for people to fear you.”

“So why don’t you have Meredith lock me up, then? Go on, if I’m so dangerous.”

It’s all slipping through his fingers. He didn’t meant to start this. He gestures at the table, at what he came for. “Can I-?”

Anders glances at the notes, then back to him. “You can’t avoid this forever. Whether you want it or not, you’re in the middle of it. You can waste your energy trying to appease someone who hates us, who hates what you are, but one day everyone will have to choose a side. Don’t be surprised when he doesn’t choose yours.”

Hawke stays quiet. Anders sighs, picks up the notes and passes them. Hawke thanks him as he takes his leave.  
  


Something is wrong, has been. Something broken, shattered, the room over, and he’s afraid to open the door and look. 

But he does. Fenris is awake when he returns, sitting in the window with a sheet wrapped around him as if to hide himself. He smiles at the sack of green apples Hawke tracked down, and motions towards the bed for him to sit.

He’s so beautiful, even the outline of him under covers, even ashen and pinched with pain like he is. Maker, he was so bright back there. He stood up and fought even in so much pain, and now it’s like he’s gone dark. He picks at the porridge Hawke brought him, holding the bowl gingerly on his lap.

“How are you… feeling?” Hawke ventures after a long silence, and receives a dark look in answer.

“I’ve felt worse,” he says eventually.

Facedown on the ground, strapped down and in pain and helpless - he didn’t have anyone to help him then, but now- He reaches for his pack, unbuckling it and laying hands on the leather cover.

“I found his grimoire.”

Fenris doesn’t look at him for a while, but he can see his jaw clench. “Where?”

“Merrill’s clan found it, actually,” he lies, a twinge of guilt, but he can’t possibly tell him. Not now. “I haven’t opened it. I wasn’t sure when to give it to you, but- I can leave it with you if you want.”

He’s shaking his head. “I don’t want it.”

“I don’t blame you,” Hawke says, “but it might have some answers for-”

“I don’t need to see it. I’ve already lived through all of it. I don’t want it.”

His voice is hard, resolute. That’s the end of it. But it can’t be.

“What do you want, Fen?” he asks quietly, seriously. His heart is hammering in his chest.

Fenris sets his bowl aside and stands up, crosses over to him with the sheet trailing behind him like a ghost. Hawke slides the book back into his pack. He comes forward, lets his knees dent the mattress between Hawke’s legs.

It’s the first time he’s seen him, really, since they returned to the city. Fenris lets go of the sheet, just close enough to feel him, and Hawke sees again the way his skin is torn, a cruel pattern of wounds. But they always were wounds, weren’t they? His face is different too, but not hurt like it was before, like it has been. There’s something in his eyes, tired but knowing, and Hawke’s own threaten to fill with tears so he looks away.

“You can’t bear to look at me.”

Hawke presses his lips together and forces himself to look up again. “I hate seeing you in pain. I hate it. I hate it.” 

Despite his efforts, a tear rolls down his face and he doesn’t bother to wipe it away. Fenris steps back, unsteady. 

“You don’t understand.” He pushes his hair off his forehead, sweaty and crusted with dried blood. “This is-” He paces, shifts, naked - more openly naked than Hawke thinks he’s ever seen him. “You’re waiting for something that cannot be, that-” a huff of frustration, and he grabs up Hawke’s pack, dumps out the book, which thuds in a curl of dust. He kicks it with the outer edge of his foot, as if he’d sooner be nudging it into a pit. 

“Take it.”

“I don’t think I should,” Hawke says. He fights the urge to remove it from between the two of them, to toss it out the window. “It’s not for me to look at.”

“You don’t want to look at it.”

“It’s not for-”

“I chose this,” Fenris says, spreading his arms, stepping back further, exposed. “What- Whatever’s in there, I wanted it. I competed for it.”

“What?” He shakes his head hard, reflexively, and his mother’s voice echoes through his head -  _ Get it through your thick skull.  _ Not something he expected to appear in his thoughts at this moment. 

“My… My sister. That’s what she told me.” Now Fenris is looking away, out the window. Hawke watches his chest rise and fall.

“Do you believe her?” he asks slowly, “Does it matter whether it’s true?”

“Why would she lie? All these years I’ve thought myself- I had thought-”

“It’s alright, Fenris-” he starts, but his voice sounds so weak.

“Then read it.”

Fenris’ eyes are bright and hard, and Hawke feels by contrast a damp pile, limp, not up to this. But he has to be. He has to fight.

“Alright, Fenris, I will. You’re right, I don’t want to look.” He’s afraid, every nerve in his body frayed and pressing him to leave. “I don’t want to, but I will if that’s what you want.”

Fenris sighs, bent, sitting back against the windowsill again. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”  
  


There’s a series of drawings of various body parts, diagrammed, overlaid with patterns, dots, curved lines. Some are like Fenris’, some not. They have copious notes scrawled in long loopy script alongside them, but it’s all in Tevene. He has only the pictures themselves to give him any indication of their purpose. He swallows and flips the page.

An empty wine bottle rolls heavy on the floor, soon to be joined by another. His fingertips are numb.

A headless neck, marked with the same branched column as Fenris’, the next an arm bent at the elbow curved with narrow close-fit bands. Somehow he knows these are not meant to be Fenris or anyone in particular; they're theoretical, designs drawn with a question mark.

The door is locked against Bodahn and Orana. Hawke has always laughed at that - “Master Hawke is not to be disturbed in his study.” He’s used it for naps far more often than for actual study. He’s glad to be able to shut everyone out now.

A few more body parts, loosely sketched, pages of notes that he can’t read, and then  _ him.  _

He closes the book on his thumb. It’s Fenris. Still without a face, but Hawke doesn’t doubt it for a second.

He can’t not look. He opens it back up.

It’s him. The posture, the way he holds himself is different, but it’s unmistakably his body, naked and unmarked. The drawing covers the whole page, lines deliberate and sharp and dark. He stands facing forward, arms stiff at his sides. Next to it, a couple of sketches indicating movement, knees drawn up, an arm over his featureless head, a dark splotch for his hair.

This is before. This is Leto. Leto, already chosen and waiting. Leto, who would soon be gone. Without any attention given to his face, there’s no trace of his thoughts or feelings. No way of knowing if he knew what was coming, suspected. He’s just gone. Hawke stares at it for a long time, at him, until tears blur his vision and he blinks hard to clear it.

More of the same, more notes, more rough sketches, theoretical markings. A loose page, a letter, written in Common.  __

_ You will be interested to know I have found my man - or rather my elf, as it happens. You are dubious, no doubt, but I am convinced this one is the very picture of my purpose. Others were stronger of body, but I believe my error before was of accounting only for physical strength. I have concluded that my subject need a strong  _ will _ above all else.  _

One of those rich asses who keeps copies of all their correspondence, as if- well, Hawke supposes someone  _ has  _ taken an interest in posterity.

_ That fool Orlesian you recommended me has made me a fine foolish agreement if I say so myself. Eight barrels for- _

He goes on about lyrium deals here for the rest of the page and into the next. Hawke skims, heart beating quicker when there’s mention of a tournament.

_... to eight competitors. This one progressed only to the final five, when he was bloodied enough to be called out, yet would not leave the arena until dragged by several guards.  _

Sounds like Carver. Holding a hand over the ache in his chest, he wonders if Varania was present to see that.

_ A pity you could not attend the event itself. But what a tale! A young buck - handsome, well-muscled, smaller than the others, but full with vigor and determination. A washing maid’s son, quiet by nature, with an aptitude for language most curious for his race. I have decided in kind to forgo removing his tongue, such a waste would it be.  _

Selfish, Hawke thinks dimly, useless to sit here wishing this man could be killed more than once. It’s the easiest direction for his mind to go, less dangerous than to look at that familiar faceless outline - a different name, but still  _ him,  _ still Fenris - and wish that he could pluck him off the page and keep him safe. 

No, instead he’ll try to feel his hands crushing the life out of the dead man who wrote this letter, clenched tighter and tighter until he breaks, chokes, and goes still.

_ My haste ruined my last attempt. Thankfully, that one had the decency to die well before I had expended much. _

He can’t read this. He folds it and sets it aside. 

More pages of notes. Notes and notes and he’s glad to not be able to read them because he thinks he knows what’s in them. 

He flips faster and faster and is taken by surprise again by the next drawing. 

It’s Fenris, this time really Fenris and not Leto, marked and naked and standing the way Fenris stands. This one is different from the others, more solid, more real.

Merrill sketched Fenris once years ago while they sat at the Hanged Man drinking away the afternoon. It was more of an impression than a detailed portrait; if she’d drawn what she saw, she would have had only the top of his head and his forearm. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he was opposed to being drawn.

Despite not being able to get a good look at him, she captured him well, the clever curve of his mouth, his hair falling across the line of his eyes.

This is the opposite of Merrill’s drawing. It is obsessively detailed. Obscenely. Like you could touch him, but… not in a good way. It captures only fear and pain, celebrates it. He’s staring ahead, blank, dazed, bare except for the thick line of a collar around his neck. There is something tense held in his arms. Defensive, like he’s expecting to be hurt. 

There’s more. There’s something that crawls under Hawke’s skin, that he feels in the lists, the notes on the page, a realization that makes his fists clench and his eyes sting.

He never understood this - this part of Fenris. He’s been so dense as to think he didn’t need to, that they were enough for each other as they are now.

And what’s more, Fenris has been trying to tell him this for - Maker for so long, so  _ long  _ he’s been trying.  _ Hawke, you don’t understand. _

_ Get it through your thick skull. _

This isn’t his to have, has never been. He can’t fix it, can’t heal it. He isn’t enough.

This isn’t his to have.

He finds the space on the floor under the desk and cries himself into a stupor.


End file.
